We tried, at first. Those who weren’t on watch tried muffling the calls with their sleeping bags pressed tightly against their ears, but nothing seemed to drown out the wheedling, entreating pleas. I could feel it like a mosquito whining in my ear, and any time I started to let my guard down, to try to sleep, it was there, trying to lure me out the door. So long as they were calling out there, we were all in danger of dashing off to our deaths, and I had the feeling they intended to call all freakin’ night.
I briefly entertained the idea of trying to negotiate better terms with Big Ugly, but deep down, I knew the Yeti wasn’t going to bargain twice in one night. Besides, he was well on the way to getting what he wanted from me already. I had nothing left to offer.
Zane had a bad night too, but it seemed to be more from the pain in his arm than the eerie voices in the dark. He tossed and turned, whimpering quietly in his sleep, but as I watched him closer, it didn’t coincide with the calls from outside. Even Cameron, who was borderline unconscious, twitched and flinched in time with every pleading voice in the darkness. But Zane was definitely sleeping, even if it was unsettled.
“Hey, little brother?” Cole was propped up in the corner, half dozing, but he opened his eyes when I called to him. “Watch the kid.”
“He’s not hearing them,” Cole concluded after a few minutes. “Why is he not hearing them?”
“The poison, maybe? The brand? Protecting Ugly’s property?” Or maybe… Cameron had prayed over the kid. He’d anointed Zane with the blessed water. And while I still wasn’t sold on this whole “god” thing, I did believe in the power of will. “Look at his arm.” There, where Cameron had traced his mysterious symbols, the creeping blackness had hardly advanced at all. It wasn’t healing the damage, but it was at least slowing it. If it could stop the poison, maybe it was stopping the magic in those voices, too.
Cam’s glass was still sitting on the mantel, half full, and when I dipped my fingers in, they tingled. Hmm. “Cole, c’mere.” I gestured at his forehead with my wet fingers. “Cross or pentacle?”
“What?”
“Cross or pentacle, they’re the only ones I know.” Hey, just because I didn’t have any magic of my own didn’t mean I was above using other people’s.
“Um… cross, I guess.” I drew an invisible cross on Cole’s forehead with the blessed water, while my brother raised a skeptical brow at me. We both stared at each other for a few seconds, and then Cole finally nodded. “I think… that helps. It’s still there, but
… not as bad.”
“Not as bad is good enough for me.” I went through the house anointing everyone else, including the dog. Out of sheer perversity, I painted a pentacle on the sleeping priest’s forehead. Almost immediately, the tension started to fade from the room.
Luckily, once we’d broken out of the lure, it seemed easier to resist. We bedded down as best we could, still taking turns at watch, and tried to salvage what was left of the night.
There was one nasty tussle with Will around two a.m., trying to keep him from walking out the door. It never occurred to me before how much heavier he is, and he packs quite a wallop when he puts his mind to it. It took Cole and me both to put him down, and then Marty dumped the last of Cam’s blessed water over his head. He came out of it spluttering, soaked, and embarrassed as hell. I came out of it with a healthy new respect for my buddy’s strength, and a bruise across my right cheek that was gonna be a shiner by morning.
Marty was up most of the night too, watching out the window. They say there’s nothing so dangerous as a man with nothing to lose, but I don’t think that’s true. Men with nothing to lose go out in a blaze of glory-big, but quick. When you have everything to lose, when you know what you’re fighting for, that’s when you’re a truly dangerous man. That’s when you take out every single motherfucker in your path, calmly and cleanly. That’s what I saw in Marty’s eyes. All he wanted was to get back to his wife and his unborn child. They almost got him once, and nothing out there in the dark was going to stop him now.
Close to morning, Zane started running a fever. I remembered that fever, so bad I’d hallucinated in full Technicolor and surround sound. Even thinking about it made my mouth dry and parched, and I drank sparingly of our small water supply. Poor kid was in for worse.
Oscar tried to stay up and care for his son, but in the end even he drifted off. I felt for the guy, really I did. If that had been Anna there, gnawed on like that… I understood the need a father has to protect his child, even if he had no idea how to go about it. Oscar was doing all he could, and hating himself every moment because it wasn’t more. I knew.
Thankfully, the voices vanished at dawn, though it would be a couple of hours before the sun would be high enough to peek over the treetops. I didn’t believe for a moment that those things were gone, but if the light was going to chase them away for a bit, I’d take it and be happy.
Besides, I had stuff I needed to do, and a promise to keep no matter how badly I didn’t want to.
I picked a moment when the guys were all mostly dozing. Only Duke raised his head to watch me slip quietly out of the cabin with my sword belted on.
Palm out, I followed the brown, crusty trail of Zane’s blood toward the trees, feeling for the edges of Cameron’s consecration spell. I found it about halfway across the cleared area, the point where the tingling on my skin ceased, like a switch turned off. The holy ground was shrinking fast. I dug a line in the dirt with my scabbard at that point, and took two big steps back.
For a moment, I eyed the forest around me, too quiet by far. Nothing was stirring, no birds were singing. As if I needed more proof that I wasn’t alone.
“Hey! Ugly!” My shout echoed off the mountain, bouncing back to me mockingly. I winced a little, knowing that it was going to rouse the guys, and I so didn’t want them to interfere with this.
Almost instantly, one of the creatures appeared at the edge of the forest, clinging to a tree trunk about eight feet off the ground. This one didn’t even have a nose, something black and gooey trickling down its face from the gaping hole. “Not you. Other Ugly. Go get your master.” The Yeti was watching through those black eyes. I could feel his gaze on me, even by proxy, but I was done dealing with lackeys.
The minion never moved from its spot on the tree, but there was a rustling farther back. Three more of the little pets clambered spiderlike through the tree branches above us, but they found places to settle and moved no more. Not like the white-furred behemoth shouldering his way into view. He didn’t even bother with the human illusion, this time, smashing saplings flat as he passed like they were so many blades of grass.
I called his kind Skin demons, the animalistic Abrams tanks of Hell, and the Yeti was the biggest I’d ever seen or heard of. Though he moved along on all fours, it was more of an apelike walk, leaning on the front limbs only as a convenience. Fully upright, he’d top me by a good four feet, and his forelegs were as long as I was tall. Christ, was he this big last time? Or was my own remembered agony coloring my perceptions?
He’d changed, that was for sure. He’d been a four-legged death machine when I’d faced him last, but more like a polar bear than a gorilla. He’d grown strong enough in just four years to come back across the veil into the real world, and he was closer to humanoid this time. He was evolving.
“Jesse James Dawson.” Oh yeah, he remembered me. His oil-slick voice oozed into my head, and I fought the urge to hunch my shoulders against the intangible taint. He came to the edge of the clearing, his muzzle wrinkling as he sniffed the air. “You reek of fear.”
“You try staying cooped up in a cabin with six other guys and no shower for a couple days. You’d reek too.” I rested my hand loosely on my sword, mostly because it would stop the shaking. He was right, I was freaking terrified. He was standing yards away, but in my mind I could feel that hot breath on my face, feel those claws digging their way into my rib cage. You beat him once. You can do it again. That was getting me nowhere. I tried again. A samurai does not fear death, only a bad death. Yeah, that didn’t help much either. Not in the face of that.