Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“It’s ringing!” Abbi said, excited. “Hello? Death?” She paused, waiting for an answer.
I shifted on the bench, suddenly more awake. She really was calling Death. On my phone.
“Oh,” she said. “Boo. It’s a voice mail. Okay, wait…Hi! Hi, Than. It’s Abbi moon rabbit, and Brogan and Lula, oh, they’re Brogan and Lula Gauge, I think you met them? You gave Brogan a kite? A dream kite?
“They want to know if you will let them die if Headwaters kills them because they don’t want to be apart and sad and lonely. Okay. Thank you. We’re gonna go kill stuff now. Bye!”
She ended the call. “There. Do you think he’ll call back?”
I took my phone and shook my head, life having fully jumped the rails, and me too tired to make sense of it. “No, Pumpkin, I don’t suppose.”
“Well, maybe.” She shrugged. “Are we going to bed now?”
“Not much time left,” I noted.
“Enough not to spend it arguing or worrying.” Lula stood and took my hand. “Let’s get you some shut eye.”
I rose with her, and Abbi took my other hand. “Can I come too?”
“Of course,” I tugged her toward the door, encouraging her through it in front of us.
The three of us climbed into bed in the room with the stars overhead, me on the outside, Lula in my arms, and Abbi hugging her. We hadn’t changed out of our clothes, though we’d shed our boots. Lorde had followed along and jumped up to lay herself across our feet.
“I’m not going to sleep,” I said. “But if I do, wake me up.”
“Mmmm,” Lula said.
If she said any more, I didn’t hear her.
* * *
The drive went by faster than I expected. Lu, me, and Abbi (who had fiercely refused to stay behind) rode in the truck. The spell book of the gods was wrapped in the shadow cloth, shut away in the witch’s box.
We’d left Lorde behind with plenty of water and food and a place where she could go to the bathroom. She hadn’t been happy about it, but Lu and I had agreed we couldn’t risk her getting hurt.
Though we’d made Lorde stay behind, we’d been unsuccessful in talking the hunters and Cardamom into doing the same.
None of them had a weapon that could kill Headwaters. Only Lula and I could cast the spells in the book.
But the Walches knew the land like the backs of their hands, and Cardamom insisted his magic could cloak and help defend us.
Abbi, of course, had her mortar and pestle.
I’d tucked the scrying mirror in my pocket.
“We’re almost there,” Lu said.
I rubbed my hand over my mouth and nodded. I was just as hungry for Headwaters’ death as Lu, and had finally admitted it could take us several more lifetimes to get good enough to control the spell, to control the beast within it.
We didn’t have those several lifetimes.
Lu slowed and signaled the turn to the rest stop.
A wooden sign with CONTINENTAL DIVIDE arching across it indicated this was the exact point where the continental United States essentially broke in two, weather from one side rising against the western edge of the mountains, and weather from the east side crashing from the other.
The rest stop wasn’t much—a paved parking area on a rise above the highway which intersected the Divide, a few placards explaining what the Divide was, and a restroom. But the view of the land was stunning.
Hills rose around us. Even though it was still dark, it was clear, the sky just the smallest bit lighter than the hills.
Lu parked the truck, and the hunters rolled up beside us.
Elmer lowered his window. I did the same. “We’re gonna tuck the car back there behind the scrub,” he said. “Then we’ll take off on foot. Don’t look for us. We’ll be watching. We’ll be there when you need us.”
“Safe travels,” I said.
The plan hadn’t gotten more complicated. We were here before dawn, enough time for the Walches to spread out and man the bolt holes that might be our only escape route out.
They’d activated cameras and magical items which could survey a wide area and would rely on those to find us if the battle with Headwaters went wrong.
It was obviously going to go wrong.
The Walches piled out of their car and headed off.
Cardamon walked over to us. “I’m coming with you. I’ll be out of line of sight, but I want to know exactly where you make your stand.
“Not sure why you’re telling us,” I said. “It’s not like we can argue any of you out of this insane plan.”
“Exactly.” His smile was bright in the darkness. “I’ve faced down power, enormous power. Didn’t always come out of those fights whole. But I’m still alive.”
“Your point?” I pushed the door and got out. Abbi bounced down after me, kitten Hado on her heels.
I moved around to the back for the witch’s box.
“You’re still alive too.”
Lula’s door opened with a creak, then clunked shut.
Card touched my arm. “Don’t forget things can change in a flash. Fate can tip her hand.”
“If Fate was ever on our side,” I said, “she’d have tipped her hand by now.”
“We don’t know the minds of gods.”
“Not that it would make any difference.”
Lu strode over to us her boots scraping gravel over pavement.
“This way,” she said.
This was it. No more time to argue or speculate. Before Headwaters arrived, we needed to find the ground where we would make our stand.
Lu moved swiftly and silently across the lot and located an animal trail we followed into the hills.
I walked behind her, Abbi behind me, Card taking up the rear.
None of us spoke, saving our breath for the hike, keeping our ears and eyes open for any sign of Headwaters arriving early.
My stomach rolled with nerves and anger, but I pushed panic, fear, worry, and rage away.
If we were going to get through this, one of us needed to keep a level head.
That one of us was me.
I focused on my feet, on the smell of damp and dust, on the coolness of the air in my lungs.
We had walked this world for decades, traveled the Route over and over.
Images of the good times flashed through my mind—those stolen moments together in graveyards, magic watch stopping time long enough for us to touch.
Lu’s birthday just a few weeks ago, her surprise and delight at the cake and gifts.
Nights in the back of the truck with the stars above us, when all the world breathed, and we breathed with it.
It hadn’t been enough. But then a million lifetimes wouldn’t be enough with Lula.
Lu took turns that led us farther and farther from the highway.
The hum and rush of cars and trucks faded into nothing. Only the sound of our footsteps broke the stillness of the early morning.
Not even the birds made noise.
“Here,” Lu said. She stopped on a rise with higher hills behind us to the north. “I think here.”
It was a good choice. We had a clear view for several miles, the ground spreading out in the distance to the west, south, and east. We’d be able to see Headwaters’ approach.
We’d have space to cast the spell that contained the beast. We’d have space to fight.
The sky was bruised gray and warm taupe, a flat, cloudless pre-dawn promising heat.
“Good.” Card strode off, quickly touching the scrub around us, whispering his magic to the plants, the stones, the soil.
Half-dryad meant he had a lot of sway with the magic and powers of the living world, growing things. I figured we could use their help too.
“I hear him,” Abbi said.
“Headwaters?”
She nodded. “He’s getting closer.”
“Which direction?” Lu asked.
Abbi pointed south.
Lula’s gaze searched for me, and I nodded.
“Let’s set up.”
I put the witch’s box on the ground and pulled the mirror out of my pocket. I removed the shadow cloth and opened the lid.
Lula knelt and lifted the book out of the box.
Abbi darted behind us, looking for cover. She crouched in the shadow of a boulder, Hado helping her fade even more into the dim corners of the morning.
“No talking,” I said.
“No talking,” Lu agreed. “No negotiations, no threats.”
“No negotiations, no threats,” I said. “As soon as we know it’s him, we unleash the spell.”
“Yes.”
“Card?” I asked. But even as the light spread like soft static through the darkness, I realized Card was gone, hidden.
Lu stood, and I stood beside her. We had practiced this—how she would hold the book so I could stand with my back to hers, the mirror positioned so I could see the page to cast the spell.
I didn’t want to take that position yet, though. Not until I saw Headwaters with my own eyes.
It felt like time belly-crawled through wet sand, an endless grinding pace.
It was cold enough, I wished I’d worn a hat, but still, sweat gathered at my hairline.
The wind picked up, and the eastern sky bloomed yellow, orange, rose, fading up to soft blue.
Moments later, the sun rose.
“He’s here,” Abbi whispered into the brutal silence.
Lu lifted her chin and squared her shoulders. I followed her gaze.
Headwaters strolled our way. To say he was human was like comparing a theater mask to a living actor’s face.
He was tall, easily eight feet, and swathed in layers of wool and satin and leather that gave him a patchwork opulence.
His hands were gloved, his face obscured by a heavy hood.
Nightmares were sketched in his shadow, horrors crawled between his feet.
It had been a hundred years since I’d seen this monster, and in those years he had become more fetid, his body twisted with rot, swollen with disease.
He saw us, too, and paused six yards distant.
“Brogan Gauge,” it purred, voice low and sonorous. “I see your flesh, I see your bones, I see your soul. Such sweet fear in you. Show me how alive you are.”
A sharp pain flared in my chest, like a fist squeezing my heart. My knees went soft, but I refused to fall, to kneel. I grunted and panted through the pain.
“Lula Gauge,” he sang. “How beautiful you have become.”
She jerked her head as if she’d been slapped and stumbled backward. Bruises spread across her neck and up her cheeks.
She glanced at me, eyes wide and panicked.
Then I did the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life—I turned my back on the monster.
Lu opened the book.
“You touch it,” the monster gasped, “the spell book.”