“You sneaky dang cat!” I dressed in the lightweight clothes in the go-bag: thin pants, flip-flops, long-sleeved tee, and a cheap hoodie. Somehow I’d forgotten to fold in panties, so I went without. Dressed, I looked up the cliff, which was a lot smaller here than where Beast had made her descent, and spotted a narrow path, something suited to a mountain goat, but it would have to do. Luckily, someone human used the path often enough to have left handholds of knotted ropes tied to roots and trees, and deep depressions where feet might go. I lost my flip-flops on the way up and arrived barefoot, sweating in the icy air and chilled to the bone, muscles quivering with fatigue and hunger, which was the body’s way of asking, What are you doing, idiot?
Once at the top, I saw the lights of Natchez in the distance and thought about calling a taxi. Instead I called Eli, who answered on the first ring. “’Sup?”
“I need a ride and some clothes. I’m about a mile upstream of Natchez. I can see the city lights in the distance. And I see a car running parallel to the river, maybe a thousand feet from the river.”
“Clothes? You want me to bring you clothes?”
“I’m not naked; I’m just underdressed for the weather. And bring boots and weapons. I have a place we need to check out. And stop and get some burgers. Maybe six.”
To his credit, Eli didn’t waste time with inanities like “Why?,” “How?,” or “Are you insane?” He said, “Google says Cemetery Road parallels the river. Get to the road. I’m not coming in the woods to find you.”
“And socks,” I added, but he had hung up. I started for the road in the distance and learned real quick about the burr grasses that grew offshore. The round, spiked seeds hurt like a son of a gun, and stuck fast to bare skin or clothes until pulled out. I said some more words I’d not repeat to a housemother, but I made it to the road in under an hour, which felt like good time, except that I could see an SUV parked on the verge in the grasses. He saw me waving and limping and was sporting nearly a full-sized grin by the time I got in and slammed the door.
There were no overhead lights, and so I demanded, “Flashlight.” Eli passed the oversized torch into my hand with a splat, like a tech with a surgical instrument. I used the bright beam to examine my sore feet. They were bloody, and several long slender thorns were deeply embedded. “If you make fun, I’ll hurt you,” I snarled.
“Me?” It was said with an attempt at innocence and a stifled snicker.
I slanted my eyes at him with a look that promised pain, and picked out the splintered thorns as Eli made a three-point turn. I remembered the street name of the church we were going to, though not the number, and I gave Eli directions before climbing into the backseat and changing clothes. I was relatively sure he didn’t watch, but I smelled his amusement and practically felt his stifled desire to mock. We were back in town, stopped at a traffic light, when he said, oh, so casually, “So, you shifted and went hunting?”
I thought about not answering, but the cat was out of the bag, literally, and there was no point not sharing. I climbed back into the front seat, pulled on my old, scratched, worn, Lucchese boots. I started braiding my hair and said, “Yeah.”
A weight fell off me, so heavy it moved like a landslide, thick and full of dangerous debris, a rumbling that I felt from scalp to toes. I took a breath and it felt just the opposite, weightless and softly lit, as if by candlelight. I blinked into the night, seeing but not seeing old houses and businesses as we motored past. All I’d said was Yeah, but it was like I found something that had been buried for eons. A smile formed on my face, all unwittingly, and to hide my reaction, which felt deeply private and personal and stupid too, I said, “So. Burgers? I smell ’em.”
Eli handed me a paper bag with golden arches on it and I chowed down, putting away three of them in less than a minute, describing the church remembered from the photo between swallows of half-chewed bites of burger.
“Your mama nev—” He stopped abruptly, and I breathed out my laughter through my nose.
“I’m sure my mama taught me to chew my food. Right after I brought it down and ripped out its throat.”
Eli laughed with me, a chortling snicker, soft but explosive. “Yeah. Okay.” He pointed. “That the church?”
“Yeah.” Eli pulled over and I got out, smoothing my palms on my jeans. I wasn’t nervous. Not really. Or not totally. But my palms were sweating. Eli appeared beside me and I jumped. I hadn’t heard him get out or walk to me. Okay, so I was nervous. “You mind waiting outside?” I asked.
“You mind taking a weapon?” He extended two of my own semiautomatics snapped into their leather holsters: the matching Walther PK380s. The handguns were lightweight and ambidextrous, with bloodred polymer grips loaded with standard rounds, in the event of a human or blood-servant attack. Normally, one went under my arm, its twin at the small of my back. “That is why you had me bring them, right?”
“No. Not right now.” I wiped my palms again, this time feeling the damp of sweat through to my skin, chilled by the night air. “That’s for later, if we need them. I can’t take weapons into the church.”
Eli shrugged and locked the guns in the case in the back of the SUV. As he came back toward me, I said, “Eli? The church may not really be there. Okay?” To his credit, Eli merely wrinkled his forehead. I headed up the white walk. It started to rain, soft, heavy splats that fell straight down and left marks on the white concrete shaped like the burrs I’d pulled from my flesh. It seemed significant somehow, that the bloody burrs and the raindrops left similar imprints. I reached the church doors, narrow and twelve feet tall, painted the color of old blood. Lightning flashed and hit with a sizzling crack that brightened the world, and the door turned color for a moment to teal green. I pushed both doors open and they felt oily and damp beneath my hand, the dark of the church ahead, the dark of night behind. They stayed canted open as I entered, the night breeze and scent of rain following me inside.
The interior of the church had oiled wooden floors composed of boards twelve inches wide, walls painted white, and benches stained a dark brown. Lightning flashed again, and the sound of raindrops began on the roof overhead, a muted water on stone. I heard a scratching sound and a light appeared ahead under the cross at the front of the church, a lantern lit by a woman’s hand with a paper taper, her body oddly obscured by shadows. I walked forward, my boots echoing off the walls.
The old woman from the river appeared out of the gloom, lit by the tiny flame, still wearing the blue-and-yellow-flowered dress. I sniffed and smelled polishing wax, wilting lilies, the smoke from the match, and another person—a witch—but the scents were faint, as if left over from a long time in the past, and there weren’t enough of them. Even if the church wasn’t still used for worship, there should have been the scents of human tourists, paint, mold . . . but there wasn’t.
The light grew as I approached, and I looked back at the sound of a ringing thud. My shadow reached out behind me, darkening and lengthening as I kept walking forward. The doors had closed behind me, shutting off my escape. Little fear critters latched onto my spine, clinging to the fine hairs there. My breathing went deep as my heart sped. I turned back to the light and to the old woman from the riverbank.
She was American Indian, but I was less certain of her tribe as I got closer, and I didn’t know how to approach, exactly, except as a petitioner. That was why I’d left my weapons behind. She was sitting on the small podium, her feet dangling off the edge, soft-soled boots barely scraping the floor.
“You came,” she said, her accent not quite what I had remembered; less Louisianan or Mississippian, more Texan, maybe.