Shotgun Sorceress

Chapter twenty-eight

Shadowland

My journey into Henry’s memories left me exhausted and shaky, and none of us thought that trying to stage an attack on either David or Miko after dark would be a good idea. So we decided to get up early and head out at dawn to try to cut off Miko’s meat puppet supply.

But as Pal snoozed on the other bed, I lay awake, thinking of everything I’d seen that day. At least now I knew what we were dealing with. I hadn’t thought a demon could become a devil by winning the soul of one of its unwilling creators, but clearly Miko had neatly exploited that particular supernatural loophole. And in the decade since, she’d managed to put herself on the road to becoming a brand-new death goddess.

Obviously she hadn’t given up on taking souls, and twisting people into committing spiritual suicide wasn’t any better than murder in my book. Then I reconsidered: perhaps she had stopped soul harvesting for a time, but returned to it with a vengeance a year ago. But why? How much of what she’d told Henry was actually true? It was impossible to tell.


After a few hours of sleep, Pal and I met Charlie at the cafeteria at 6 A.M. for a quick breakfast, and then we gathered our gear and weapons and the black kittens and flew out toward the Civic League Park near the center of town.

“The water lily garden is back behind those trees,” Charlie said from her seat behind me, a little too loudly in my ear. She pointed toward a thicket of oaks beyond the sun-browned remains of a municipal golf course. “We should land before they see us.”

“Okay,” I replied. “How far can the shadow see and hear?”

“It can see people who are in the water with it, but if it’s hunting on land it needs David’s eyes and ears,” she said. “It felt like it needed mine, anyway.”

I scanned the ground beneath us; at the intersection beside the entrance to the golf course, there was an abandoned Sonic drive-in. Pal, land us over there.

Pal settled gently in the shade of the Sonic’s covered parking area. Someone had long ago smashed most of the plastic menus at the individual order stations. I slid down to the weed-ridden pavement, and Charlie followed.

“So if we blind David, we’ve partly blinded the shadow?” I asked her as I pulled my black kitten off its climb up my brown dragonskin jacket. I tucked the little creature back into the sling I’d borrowed from the dorm’s front desk. Even unbuttoned, the jacket was stiflingly hot, but the sun was strong and I didn’t want to burn. The kitten seemed to sense that massive carnage was on the agenda, and it kept trying to crawl up around my neck.

Charlie looked startled, then distressed. “I guess so.”

“Look, I know he’s your friend, or used to be,” I said gently. “I know you don’t really want to hurt him. Pal or I can temporarily blind him with a spell. But we have to take him out somehow, or we’ll have a hard time here.”

“I know,” she said. She pulled the clip on her AK-47, checked her ammunition, then shoved it back into the receiver. “The shadow picked me because it knew I had evil in me. Maybe I didn’t do much of a job fighting it, but I tried. I really did. But David … I don’t think he’s tried to get rid of it, ever. He’s not at all bothered by what it tells him to do.”

Charlie paused, looking furious, as if she might start crying. “He totally hid that side of himself from me. How … how can you be friends with somebody for years, hang out with them all the time, and not realize they have that kind of evil in them? The … the things he’s doing now, they’re nasty.”

“You weren’t a bad kid. David didn’t sound like he was a bad kid, either,” I told her, hoping my words would help. I sympathized with her and wanted her to feel better, but more important, I needed her focused for what was ahead. “Everyone has a nasty side. Devils find the kernels of evil in a person, turn on the heat, and pop them until the good’s buried. But it can be found again.”

I hoped what I was telling her was true, for the Warlock’s and my own sake as much as hers and David’s. “If we can destroy the shadow, I bet he’ll come around.”

“I brought this on him. On everyone,” she said quietly. “I need to see this finished.”

She wiped her eyes, adjusted her gun strap, and shook the tension out of her shoulders. “Okay. We got to do this. Listen: the shadow can move from puddle to pond to river if the waters are near each other. There’s a half-dozen lily ponds down there in the garden—the shadow’s in one of them, I think—but there’s another natural pond nearby and past that, the river. The shadow will stick around if it thinks it’s gonna get something to eat, but it can bug out of there in a hurry if it thinks it’s threatened. It can probably use the meat puppets to transport itself—they’re mostly water, and they can’t say no. If the shadow goes to the river we’ve lost it for good, probably.”

She took a deep breath. “So I guess that’s a long way of saying, I think we probably have just one shot at it. And I’m kinda worried that if the first thing we do is blind David, the shadow will know something’s up and just hightail it for the river.”

I hadn’t thought of that; I was still feeling pretty feverish, the heat and sun weren’t helping, and my brain was more than a little addled.

“Well, that changes things,” I replied. “Does David keep a lot of the meat puppets around?”

“I think so, yeah. I think he uses them as … toys.” She loaded the word with a variety of unsavory implications. “And when he’s done with them, he feeds them to the shadow.”

“Hm.” I pondered the problem.

“Might I suggest,” Pal said to me, “that going in spells and guns ablaze might not be our best strategy? If we could find some way of catching the shadow off guard, that would give us a greater likelihood of succeeding here.”

“Right,” I replied, shrugging out of my backpack. “Okay. Change of plan. Pal, shrink yourself down as much as possible.” I started to pull the saddle pad and saddlebags off his back.

He blinked at me. “How small, exactly?”

I stacked his tack in a pile against the drive-in’s pale brick wall and laid my shotgun and pack on top. “I want you to look like nothing more than a common wolf spider and ride on Charlie’s shoulder. Can you do that?”

“I suppose so.” He sang himself down until he was the size of a small tarantula. “Is this good?”

“Good enough, I think.” I scooped him up and set him on Charlie’s shoulder. He blended in reasonably well with her gray T-shirt; I doubted anyone would be able to spot him at a distance.

Charlie didn’t look entirely happy to have Pal sitting on her. “What now?”

“Now we walk over to the gardens.” I pulled my kitten out of my sling and handed it to her, then took the sling off and threw it onto the pile of gear. “You’re going to tell David that I’m your prisoner, a gift for the shadow. You’ve changed your mind and you want to join them in their merry life of murder and plunder and zombie raising.”

The girl stood there holding the kitten, staring at me as if I’d sprouted a second head that was reciting French existentialist poetry. “You … want me to hand you over to the shadow? Are you nuts?”

“Yes, I do, and no, I’m not crazy. I have a plan.” I gave her my best Cooper-style, everything’s-gonna-be-okay smile. “Convince them that you’re serious about joining Team Shadow, and then follow my lead. Oh, and one other thing: if all of a sudden I look like I’m not myself? I’m probably not. Get away from me as fast as possible.”

She stowed the kitten in her sling with its twin, and we followed the sidewalk to the Civic League Park. The front gates were rusted open. The path inside the park led us through displays of long-dead rosebushes down to a ravine shaded with hemlocks and live oaks. Once we’d crossed a limestone footbridge over a small natural pond filled with koi, we came out of the trees into the big bowl-shaped water lily garden. The air stank of human filth and rotting flesh. I put my hands on top of my head.

“Put your gun at my back,” I whispered. Charlie did as I asked.

On the opposite rim, a small cottage shaded by oaks and pecan trees overlooked the garden, which was roughly the size of a couple of Olympic swimming pools set side by side. In it were eight rectangular, raised concrete water lily ponds with wide limestone rims. Most of the ponds were in varying stages of decay and algae-choked neglect with a few lilies bravely blooming here and there; one pond, however, was nothing but foul-looking sludge, black as crude oil.

A skinny young man of maybe nineteen or twenty with a shaved head was dragging something down the path from the cottage. He was wearing just a pair of muddy canvas sneakers and a ragged blue Superman T-shirt.

He heaved once more on his burden, and then I heard him snarl, “Get up, dammit!”

The burden twitched, and laboriously stood. It was another thin young man, completely naked but for a huge American eagle tattoo on his chest. His mouth hanging slackly open, he took three tottering, marionette-like steps and then collapsed onto his knees.

Cursing, David hauled the meat puppet up and half carried, half dragged him toward the pond of black sludge.

“God,” Charlie whispered. “He looks even worse than he did before.”

David, intent on his task, didn’t notice us. He hauled the puppet to the edge of the sludge pond, stood him up, and pushed him in. As soon as the puppet landed inside, the sludge heaved up around him and then ripped him to shreds as if the liquid were made of a million vicious blades. In seconds it was all over, and the sludge was still again, gleaming quiet and dark in the sun.

David was leaning forward on his knees, catching his breath, but he turned his head sharply toward the sludge as if it had said something to him, and then he stood up, squinting at us.

“Who’s there?” he yelled.

“It’s me,” Charlie called back. “I … I thought about what you said, and you’re right. It’s stupid to be on the losing side. I want to join y’all. And I got a present for the shadow.”

“Well, heyyy, how about that!” David grinned, looking as excited as a six-year-old on Christmas morning. His teeth were rotted gray stubs in his mouth, little tombstones in his bleeding gums. “I knew you’d come around! We got us some good times ahead, girlfriend. Why don’t you and your present come on down and let me take a look?”

We slowly walked toward David, my hands still on my head, Charlie’s rifle at my back. As we got closer, I saw that his head wasn’t shaved; the hair looked like it had mostly all fallen out except for some stray long greasy strands here and there. Even his eyebrows were gone. His eyes were a sickly yellow, and he didn’t look or smell like he’d bathed in months. His face was blotched with acne, and his bald genitals were crusty, pitted with chancres.

“Well, ain’t you a tasty-looking piece?” he asked me, his jaundiced eyes shining. “Too bad you’re a girl, but you look like you got some muscle in your bustle, so we can play a little make-believe. I bet you’re a whole lot more lively than what I got around here.”

David snapped his fingers, and there was a mass rustling in the trees and brush ringing the top of the garden. At least thirty meat puppets in various stages of dress and undress emerged and stood at attention. Most of them appeared to be captured ROTC cadets, and they were armed with axes and baseball bats.

Hoo boy. This could go badly.

“My very own gimp squad.” David laughed. “They do exactly what I tell ’em, but sometimes that gets a little boring, you know? So, hey, Charlie, thanks.”

“Sh-she’s for the shadow,” Charlie stammered, looking horrified.

“Aw, the shadow don’t mind sloppy seconds. That’s the deal, I always get first dibs.” Then his expression soured. “Well, Miko gets first dibs, but that ain’t gonna have to go on too much longer, ’specially not now that you’re here, Charlie.”

He beamed at her. “Good times, I’m telling you! We’ll bust on out of here with all the loot I got up at the house, drive to Vegas, live like gangstas!”

David suddenly turned toward the sludge pond like a dog that had been chain-jerked. “Aw. Seriously? … Fine.”

He turned back to Charlie, petulant as a kid who’d just been denied an ice cream cone. “The shadow wants to see her. Get her up on that ledge over there.”

Charlie poked me in the back with the barrel of her rifle, and I stepped toward the sludge pond, my heart hammering in my sweaty chest. At least with my jacket on over my bull-riding glove, David couldn’t see my fire, and with a little luck the shadow wouldn’t be able to sense it until it was too late.

Jessie … I heard the little-girl voice inside my head. It was just as creepy as Charlie had described. Tell me what you want, Jessie.

Licking my suddenly dry lips, I climbed up onto the pond’s ledge and stared down into the shiny blackness. Tried to blank out my thoughts, in case it had stronger telepathy than Charlie had suggested. I started to replay the lyrics to Beastie Boys songs in my head, over and over, no sleeping till Brooklyn, it was sabotage.

Come on, you can tell me, the shadow wheedled. I bet you don’t like that Miko much, do you? I don’t like her, either.

Suddenly, I had an image in my head of myself killing David, taking his head right off with one of the puppets’ axes, and taking his place. I wouldn’t become a diseased wreck like him. I was strong, so much stronger than the boy, and the shadow and I could defeat Miko together. And then we could rescue my men and leave the town. I could have anything I wanted, and with the shadow’s power, nobody could stop me.

It was a compelling vision, all right, and for two milliseconds I might have even believed it.

“I hate Miko with the white-hot passion of a thousand burning suns,” I whispered, crouching down on the ledge. The surface of the sludge was bulging slightly; I knew the shadow was right there below me. “But you know what?”

I whipped off my glove and plunged my flaming hand into the sludge, and as the shadow shrieked inside my head, I pulled us both into my hellement.

I was standing in my old bedroom, and before me was what looked like an overturned five-gallon bucket of raspberry jelly, only it sure didn’t smell like any fruit you’d want to eat. It didn’t have any visible eyes or mouth or any other features, but the thing shuddered as if it were startled, disoriented.

“I hate slimy, parasitic little devils like you a whole lot more,” I told it.

The jelly shrieked and whipped spiky pseudopods at my legs. I jumped backward onto the bed to dodge the swipe, rolled across the mattress, and landed on the other side. The jelly was sprouting pseudopods everywhere, the red tentacles shooting up to stick to the ceiling, the walls, lifting the boneless body up off the ground as the jelly separated in the middle, forming a toothy, noxious maw. Worse, the jelly was swelling, growing, apparently feeding off the dark energies that still irradiated the hellement.

“That was a nasty trick, bringing me here,” the jelly said in its little-girl voice. “I’m going to kill you for it.”

My sword and shield were by the dresser where I’d left them; I snatched them up barely in time to slash at a pair of pseudopods shooting at me from across the bed. The cut pseudopods retreated, whipping away, spraying me with ichor that sizzled painfully on my face and arms. The jelly was growing so quickly that in a few minutes it would surely suffocate me with its sheer bulk.

“If you kill me, how are you going to get out of here?” I yelled, trying to ignore the pain from my acid burns.

My question registered, and seemed to stymie it for just a minute. I quickly blinked through several gemviews with my ocularis, hoping I’d see something … and there it was: a pulsing heart in the middle of the gooey mass.

There was no time to waste. I launched myself back across the bed at the monster and rammed my left arm right into its soft body. Instantly my flesh was burning, my skin melting, and the creature was shrieking, whipping my back and arms with its pseudopods, and I knew I’d be dead in just a few seconds if I didn’t kill it. Right before the nerves in my hand died, I felt my fingers close on its nasty little heart and I gave a hard jerk, pulling it free. The pseudopods went slack, and the jelly fell to the floor with a tremendous splat.

I staggered backward into the dresser. My left hand was nearly skeletal, and the blue-black heart slipped from my fingers onto the floor. The organ sprouted centipede legs and started to scurry back to the jelly mass, presumably to regenerate the monster. I took careful aim with my sword and speared it right to the floorboards. The heart spasmed around the blade, then began to disintegrate into a nasty gray liquid. The jelly body, too, was decaying to a pool of sour blood on the floor.

Once the burst of adrenaline subsided, I realized that my left arm was in tremendous pain, and the acidic ichor was continuing to eat its way through my flesh and bone. Time to leave. I hopped over the puddle and opened the red portal door with my good hand.

The return to my body was disorienting and unpleasant. I couldn’t see; there was a thick, stinging liquid in my eyes. My face was wet and sticky, and there was blood and something else in my mouth. I spat it out, just as a dozen death-memories hit me, and I spent the next few minutes being violently ill.

When I’d purged most of the blood and the memories along with it, I wiped my eyes with my arm—thank God, I was still wearing my dragonskins—and blinked, trying to see.

I was sickened but not even remotely surprised to see the mangled corpse of a meat puppet at my feet. But I wasn’t in the garden. I looked around; I’d run up into the trees, I supposed to find more puppets to kill. The garden below me was the scene of a massacre; it looked as though David had sent a half-dozen puppets after me at the sludge pond, but then I’d run around killing anything I could lay my hands on. No one was moving.

My heart dropped. Charlie. Where was Charlie? And then I saw her kneeling beside David. She looked like she was okay, or at least not badly injured. David’s jaundiced eyes were staring wide, and I could see a dark pool of blood under his head.

The exhaustion hit me all at once, and I had to lean against the trunk of a nearby pecan tree to keep from keeling over. I got my second wind after a moment or two, and I made my way down the path toward Charlie, my arms and legs shaking and muscles twitching and fever at full burn.

“Charlie,” I croaked. “Are you okay?”

She nodded, not replying. Tears were running down her cheeks as she stared at David’s body.

“Did I do that?” I asked.

She shook her head, then gently turned David’s face toward me so I could see the bullet wound in his temple. “I did, when he sicced the zombies on you.”

“I—I’m sorry you didn’t get to say something to him, before, you know …” I trailed off, then thought, Pal, where the heck are you?

“I’m over here, on this lily pad. I wasn’t sure how I could do any good; Charlie reached safety on her own and attempting to stop the Goad rampaging in your body seemed rather perilous even at my full size.”

Well, embiggen yourself, already … looks like we’ve got more corpse hauling to do.

She wiped her face on the back of her hand. “It’s okay. What was I gonna say, anyhow? ‘Sorry I brought this evil into your life’? ‘Sorry you liked the evil a whole lot better’n you ever liked me’? ‘Sorry you turned out to be a real freak, and yet part of me still loves you’? Shee-it. The bullet probably said everything that needed saying.”

“Do you want to bury him?” I asked.

“No.” She stood up slowly, still gazing down at his body. “He used to be the best friend I’ve ever had … but all these other guys? They were someone’s best friends, too. Someone’s sons and maybe a few of them were someone’s daddies. Whatever we do for David, we do for all of them. And I ain’t got the strength to dig all those graves, do you?”

“Tell her we can give all of them a proper burial,” Pal said. “I know a spell we can use …”