“Save her. Even if you have to let me go to do it…save her. No matter what Lucien asks of you, no matter how dark and vicious the valley becomes, hold the course. Save her and we can finally rest.”
When I awoke in the hotel room, the moonlight of the midnight hour was softly falling through the curtains. For a moment, I thought I saw Sarai standing there in the pool of silvery light. Then she was gone.
I stumbled into the bathroom. In the dark, I took care of business, then splashed water on my face while trying not to look into the mirror. The dead girls and, worse, the dying might be looking back out at me. On my way back, I checked to make sure the Necronomicon was safely tucked away. It was still in the same drawer, though the Gideon’s Bible had disappeared. I eyed the vile book nervously, half-expecting it to burp out a single corner of a page, like the cartoon cat post-canary.
When I laid back down, a sleeping Veruca draped one arm over my bicep without waking. I had to bite down on my tongue not to scream. It had been a week like that, where even the best things got twisted.
10
T
he CRT team leaders met us at an office building downtown the next morning. I didn’t have much experience with the military mindset, but I was fairly impressed with what I saw. After talking to us yesterday, Lucien dispatched not one, but two, of Valente International’s CRTs. Mr. Valente was committed to making sure wendigoes became an extinct species.
I had expected something different from a Corporate Response Team. The phrase made me think of spin doctors and ad executives. Given what they were sent to do, my brain married that image with upscale security guards. I would have been closer if I would have pictured Samuel L. Jackson playing a former military blacktops soldier turned private sector after an early retirement, then cloned multiple times. All six of the leaders struck me as being qualified to take over a third world country with a rubber band, a paper clip, and a few loyal followers.
The difficulty that concerned them wasn’t so much the wendigoes as the presence of civilians. While Valente International was allowed by law to recruit, train, and equip any number of such CRTs, it was illegal for them to operate on U.S. soil. They were worried about how to take down a pair of supernatural predators while attracting minimal attention from the nearby picnickers. I was worried about little things, like the wendigoes killing all of them.
In the end, it was decided that half of one team would go in plain clothes and form a loose ring outside the picnic. The rest would be in full tactical gear and spread out along the top of a hill north and east of the party area. I would arrange for Tia to lead the wendigoes through an open valley below it, but the CRTs were going to deploy thermal sensors throughout the woods in case my “inside man” proved less than reliable in getting the wendigoes into position. Valente told me to keep it simple, so I neglected to mention that my co-conspirator was an adolescent female lake spirit. I’m not sure which of those elements they would have found most objectionable, but I was sure they wouldn’t like it.
I was glad to be done with it. I had been disappointed when Valente first pulled me out of the game, but I had both time to think about it and a night lying next to Veruca. One made me realize just how lucky I had gotten the first time around. The second made me feel like I still had something to live for. Dorothy would be avenged whether I was the one pulling the trigger or not.
The meeting did have one upside to it. I had been curious as to how their plainclothes men would have enough firepower to deal with a wendigo, if one managed to sneak through. I doubted they could carry a flamethrower and still look inconspicuous. Apparently, fire was a common enough job requirement for a Valente CRT that they were well ahead of me. One of them showed me a small black cylinder, only slightly larger than a can of mace. He insisted it was a single-use handheld flamethrower. Unless they were pulling my leg, and they didn’t seem like the type to joke about anything (especially about weaponry), it produced a ten foot long cone for five seconds and would burn in excess of two thousand degrees. In short, it was easily twice as powerful as the burst I had called up through the candles and without any reference to magic.
I asked how I could get one, not really expecting a positive answer. The team leader surprised me by saying I could keep that one, so I did. If I ever ran into another wendigo, it would come in handy. No sooner did I slide it into my pocket then I wondered what I could get a gremlin to build for me if I traded the device off to him.
“Don’t even think about it.”
11
W
hat bothered me the most was how perfectly it all went down. Tia didn’t balk at the yellow and purple polka-dot beach umbrella I brought her in payment for her wendigo-baiting services. I got the feeling that either my fight with Hungry Winter or my conversation with the Eye of Winter had impressed her to the point that she wasn’t likely to try anything slick with me again.
No tourists or park rangers stumbled along at the wrong moment to discover a small army setting up on the hill. No random meteors crashed down out of the sky on Dora. There wasn’t a single pimple on Veruca’s face. I wished there would have been. It would have relieved me to know that not everything was going our way. As rough as it had been for me lately, I found it impossible to believe that fortune favored me completely.
Technically, Veruca and I should have been cruising down the road in Dora, possibly on the other side of Tulsa, heading toward the Missouri border. But while neither of us was clamoring for a spot on the front lines, we both wanted to be there in case something went horribly wrong. Besides, it was a Valente company picnic and we were Valente employees. Given all of the subsidiaries involved, I doubted anybody would notice we weren’t locals. We mingled and ate hot links, all the while keeping one ear open for the sound of gunfire. I had a digital thermometer and kept checking the ambient air temperature around me, but there were no unnatural dips, just the slow, steady progress of night.
Nothing happened. Around midnight, a pair of men tried to fight each other, but they were both far too drunk to be any good at it. One of the plainclothes I recognized from the setup meeting broke it up with little more than a flick of the wrist and a stiff arm. By one o’clock, it was down to just us and the plainclothes.
I walked up to the one who had played peacemaker. “I guess they decided not to show up. We go to all this trouble...”
He held up one hand, then placed the other over his ear wick. When the hand came back down, he said, “Actually, sir, we did. We killed one and wounded the other. The out team is following its blood trail to ground to finish the job.”
“What? When did they show up? Why weren’t we notified?” I had a sickened image of the female wendigo dragging around a wounded animal in its teeth to create a fake pathway of vitae. It was smart enough to plan an ambush of its own.
“Two hours ago, sir. And there was no need, sir. Your plan went over near-perfect. No injuries, no civilian encounters.”
I felt like stealing a line from Rambo, something about his men already being dead, but maybe I was just punch-drunk on paranoia. Before I could think of anything better to say, his hand returned to the ear wick.
“It’s over, sir. Out team called in. They’re both dead.”
I tried to smile for his benefit. To me, it still felt very far from over.
Fourth Interlude
C
arrie Ann Womack edged her way closer to the Hispanic man. She was traveling alone, but didn’t want to look like she was alone. The middle-aged man appeared to be by himself, too. Carrie didn’t know what she would do if a plump wife and a pack of children suddenly appeared from the bus stop restroom.
She had thought about taking a Greyhound before, but it was different today. Today, she had courage. She bought two tickets from the Asheville station to New York City. Either the clerk believed her when she said her dad and her were going to visit his sister or the clerk didn’t really care. Somehow, she thought he would’ve cared if she had said she was an unaccompanied minor. Adults had the funniest ideas about what eleven-year-olds could and couldn’t do.
Carrie wasn’t old enough to travel all the way by herself, but she was going to, whether Greyhound said she could or not. She wasn’t supposed to have to deal with abusive adults at her age, but that hadn’t stopped the drunken slob who used to be her dad. He was still passed out when she left for school that morning. Carrie had looted his wallet and discovered he had just gotten paid the day before. He didn’t keep jobs long enough for her to figure out the pay schedule, but luck was with her. She took it all instead of the usual five she sneaked when he wasn’t looking, then doubled back to her room to add a change of clothes to her backpack. If her luck held, she’d be in the Big Apple by morning.
Carrie corrected herself: it wasn’t luck. Her knight had come to her last night in her dreams. He hadn’t been clad in shining armor, but in teddy bear fur. She couldn’t hear what he was saying, but she knew why he had come: he was going to save her from the monster. That’s what knights did. Every girl dreamed of a knight coming to her rescue, but she really had one. Of course, most girls she knew didn’t really need rescuing.
It had been all right before Mom died. But the onset of her puberty, his growing alcoholism, and their mutual grief had twisted her dad into an evil dragon. She wanted to kill him, but that was a knight’s job. Carrie’s job was to run, to get away. Her knight would find her in New York.
She had seen TV shows about New York. They took care of kids there. They had detectives who investigated crimes about kids and lots of social workers who knew how to do their job. They’d put her with child services and the caseworker would believe her when she said her dad hit her. She didn’t think the police in New York could arrest her dad in North Carolina, but she knew they wouldn’t send her back. She would be safe with a foster family until her knight came to her. If she was really lucky, she wouldn’t even need him when he did show up. She could take care of herself. Still, she would love him. He was a knight, after all, and his visitation had given her the confidence she needed to escape.
The bus came and Carrie walked on at the heels of the man she had temporarily adopted. The driver took their tickets, but didn’t say anything. Carrie took a seat by herself on the row behind the pretend father. The rest of the day was spent studying the map she had purchased at the bus station and staring out the window. Carrie had escaped from the monster and was making her way to the fabled City of the North.
It wasn’t marked on her map or on any of the road signs, but Carrie Ann Womack was heading straight to hell. It would be four years, six months, and two days before she would find herself sliding into an IHOP booth across from her predestined knight.
Part Five
Seasons Change
“Is the pen mightier than the sword? Maybe, maybe not. Size doesn’t always count for as much as you might think: I’ve seen a goblin kill a dragon. Wait, the moral of that story is don’t swallow anything whole that’s holding a spear. Still, it’s not wise to judge a book by its cover.”
- Jadim Cartarssi, Off-topic Parabalist
1
“N
ot bad for a newbie.” By the sound of her voice, Veruca was clearly entertained. “The way you’re spending money, a girl would think you had been rich forever.”
“It’s not my money,” I said, defensively. “Besides, Lucien had most of this stuff lying around already.”
She slid up beside me. Her long, lone bang was carnation pink today, a color that I’d come to associate with her being more playful than normal. “Relax, tiger. I think it’s nice. I bet you could sling some serious magic in here.”
I hoped she was right. Lucien Valente has opened up his checkbook to help me open up shop. Valente International Headquarters already had a ritual magic room, but it was located a floor below the company’s servers and firewalls. To date, the
National Enquirer
had run three different stories about the specters Valente web surfers ran into the one and only day I was in said ritual room. After that, Lucien and I both agreed it would be best if I spent most of my time off-site.
Fortunately, Valente owned an abandoned motel through one of his subsidiaries. The first floor was being renovated for use as halfway house apartments for sex offenders, which had more to do with tax write-offs than charitable interests on Valente’s part. They weren’t exactly my first choice of neighbors, but their parole stipulated that they couldn’t own or operate computers, much less have Internet access. I suspected the other reason Lucien picked this spot for me was that no one would miss my new neighbors if a ritual ever called for a human sacrifice or two.
“I knew I liked the guy for some reason. He’s practical.”
I ignored him. If that was on Lucien’s mind, I didn’t want to know. I was finding that applied to a lot of things when it came to my new boss: I didn’t want to know.
“Because if you knew, you would have to do something about it. Damn hero complex.”
“You said it.”
“Ever thought about applying that principle to Sarai?”
“Shut up.”
“Colin?” Veruca’s tone was puzzled, suddenly cautious and curious. “Are you okay?”
I shook the cobwebs out of my brain and let my fingers wrap around her delicate hand. “I’m getting there. Just an old ghost in the machine.”
“Really?” She perked up.