The thing must have been just above our heads the whole time, waiting in the branches like some kind of gruesome spider, and it dropped down onto Duke’s back like one of those monkeys at the rodeo. The dog whirled with a savage snarl, trying to get at the tormentor clinging to his shoulders, and nearly knocked Marty sprawling in the process. Mastiff and minion went brawling into the brush and out of sight.
“Duke!” Marty lunged to go after his pet, and Cole and I both grabbed for his shoulders to stop him.
“Duke can take care of himself. We have to get out of here.” Even as Cole said it, another of the creatures darted out of the bushes, slamming into my brother’s right arm. The flashlight strobed as it went spinning into the darkness, and the creature vanished into the night again. The third one clipped Marty in the back of the knees, but the solid bastard was just too stubborn to fall. The minion bounced off those tree trunk legs and into the bushes again in a crackle of brush. Somewhere a few yards distant, Duke was still going at it with his new special friend. From the sounds of the snarling, the dog was winning.
“Shit… Backs together, boys.” The three of us took up positions, shoulders pressed together as we waited to see where they’d come from next. But really, what were we going to do? I was the only one armed, and Marty was half gimped.
One darted forward, almost at Cole’s feet, then retreated when my brother lashed out with a vicious kick. “What they hell are they doing? Why aren’t they just attacking?”
The next one dropped out of the branches above us again, and only the snapping of twigs warned us in time for Marty to lurch to the side. The thing landed on all fours on the forest floor and paused to hiss at us before leaping back into the brush. Damn, it was fast. I couldn’t even get a decent swipe at it with my katana.
“Pack tactics.” Marty got back into position, closing the gap in our circle. “Like a wolf pack harrying an elk. They’re trying to wear us down.”
“They’re smarter… unh!… than they look!” Cole paused in midsentence to kick at another one that darted in and out of the trees in front of him, taunting.
“They’re not. It’s him.” The Yeti was dancing his little puppets on their strings, trying to scare us into recklessness, trying to tire us out. And it wasn’t lost on me that the nasty things hadn’t made a single lunge toward me. That pretty much told me all I needed to know. The Yeti didn’t want me dead. He wanted something much worse.
What he wanted, I could use against him.
“Hey! Hey, ugly!” My voice bounced up and down the hillside, echoing. Ugly! Ugly! Ugly! The forest fell silent, even Duke’s unseen battle dying down. After a moment, the mastiff’s big square head poked out of the bushes, and he limped back to Marty, favoring his right hind leg but otherwise all right. “C’mon, stinky! Show yourself!”
“Jess, what are you doing?” I shushed Cole with a wave of my hand. Believe it or not, I knew what I was doing. Pretty sure. Maybe.
After a long moment of waiting, a branch above us creaked, and we looked up to find one of the minions hanging upside down from it, like a wingless bat. It was the female, the one with the missing hand. Her clawed toes and remaining fingers sunk into the bark to give her purchase, and her head twisted at a bizarre angle to look at us right side up, the blackness of her eyes glowing from within. Tendons in her neck creaked audibly in protest at the unnatural position.
“Hey there, ugly. You in there?” He was. I could feel him watching.
The thing’s mouth opened, but her lips didn’t move. Instead, the voice emerged from her throat, like through a loudspeaker. “I see you.” It was his voice, the Yeti’s voice. I would never forget that guttural rumble, coated with oil-slick taint.
“I just bet you do.” I stepped forward, separating myself from the guys, ignoring Cole and Marty’s whispered protests. “Shame on you, skirting around the rules like this. You’ll never get what you want this way.”
The minion’s head twisted almost full circle the other direction, still focusing those eerie black eyes on me. “And what do I want?”
“You’re too big and ugly to be coy. Let us go. Or you’ll never have it.”
Behind me, Cole whispered, “Never have what?” and I swatted at him without looking.
The Yeti chuckled, but his speaker never moved. “And just how do you propose to stop me?”
“Because if you don’t let all of us go, right now, when I get back to that cabin, I’ll blow my own fucking brains out, and that’ll be the end of that.”
“Jesse!”
“Shut up, Cole!” I smacked at him again, and kept my eyes on the Yeti’s little pet. “You know me. You know the samurai believed in ritual suicide. Don’t push me.” I wouldn’t, of course. The samurai may have believed in ritual suicide, but I believed very strongly in me-not-being-dead. But I was hoping the Yeti wouldn’t call my bluff. Really, really hoping.
Suddenly, the Yeti was no longer amused. The handless female’s claws shifted on her branch, unsettled in her master’s anger. “You will not. I will devour them all.”
“Then it seems we’re at an impasse, aren’t we?” And this was the tricky part. How to deal with a demon, without really dealing with a demon. Take lessons, kiddies. “How about we talk this out, once everyone’s back on safe ground? Say, tomorrow?”
She scuttled closer, the branch dipping under even her slight weight until her gaunt and filthy face was level with mine. “You will swear this. To willingly present yourself.”
“ If you let us go now. All four of us. Let us get back to the cabin untouched, and without any of your choir boys singing out.”
A low growl uttered from the skeletal creature’s chest, but in the end the Yeti agreed. “I will see you on the morrow, champion.” The light in the minion’s eyes went out like a snuffed candle, but she didn’t move. Her head slowly rotated back the other direction, keeping us in her hungry black gaze.
“Guys… start walking. Slowly.” I didn’t know if those things were like most predators, but I didn’t want to take the chance that running would trigger them into pouncing. I didn’t believe the Yeti’s promise of safe passage for a moment. I just hoped it would buy us a bit of time.
“Jess… what have you done?”
“Just walk, little brother. Keep walking, and don’t stop for anything.”
Cole got us pointed in the right direction-I’d been right, they’d been luring us the wrong way-and we started picking our way through the thick underbrush.
The creatures shadowed us all the way back. Duke’s constant rumbling growl was indicator enough, even if we hadn’t been able to see them slipping through the branches like demonic spider monkeys. Every once in a while, we’d round a fallen tree or a pile of dead limbs to catch one of them leaping silently out of our path. They kept their distance, and there were no more eerie calls to scramble our brains.
It was hard, once we could see the clearing through the trees, not to just bolt for safe ground, but I had Cole’s shirt knotted in my fist, and he held Marty’s, and the three of us calmly and slowly crossed those last few yards. “Walk,” I kept murmuring to them. “Just walk.”
The tingle of Cam’s consecration spell never felt so good, as we crossed that invisible line of safety.
I could breathe again.
12
W ill was waiting for us on the porch, with Cole’s handgun. My brother made a big show of taking it back from him and unloading it, glaring at me all the while. I glared back. If he didn’t know me well enough to know I’d been bluffing, that was his problem.
And of course, the damn voices started up again the moment we were inside. “Ain’t he a dandy!” “I’m bored, are we there yet?” “I’m a little teapot!”
“I swear, if I never hear ‘I’m a little teapot’ again,” Cole growled, and I was inclined to agree with him. The song was forever ruined. “We’re never gonna get any sleep if that keeps going on.”