Darkthunder's Way (43 page)

It was hopeless, he thought, as he slumped down beside Alec, with Liz on his other side. Calvin stood stoic in the corner, brow furrowed. Uncle Dale was simply staring.

For the first time in his life David was utterly without resource, without idea. His brain felt as though someone had drained it of all intelligence, as though thunder and lightning and fear and waiting had pounded his senses numb.

Idly he fished in his pocket and curled his fingers around the pouch that held the uktena scale. Unbidden he found his thoughts returning to the serpent. That had been no worse than this, really; though they’d known they were going into battle, and had therefore had time to plan. But the odds had been just as bad—worse, actually. He could still remember the image: that one heart-stopping moment when the uktena had loomed over him in all its terrible, wonderful glory, with light flashing from between its eyes that was whiter than the Faery druids’ lightning, and the power of red blood flooding through its whole massive body. He knew what it was like, now; how it was to have one’s innocent sleep disturbed by outside forces bent on one’s destruction.
God
,
how nice that would be: to turn himself into a giant snake with a jewel of fire in his skull and lash out at those who tormented him; to feel his body swell with rage as hot blood surged through him, filling him with fire and strength and power.

“David! What’s happening to you!” It was Liz’s voice, but she sounded strangely distant. “David! Oh
no
!
David—”

Suddenly there was no more sound. As suddenly, Liz and Alec were leaping away from him. David’s eyes started to burn, he blinked—once, twice; looked down—and saw his knees as from a distance. But there was a rip in his jeans that hadn’t been there, and they felt suddenly tighter. A sharp pain prodded him, and he yanked his hand from his pocket (such a strange movement, such a long way) and stared at it. Blood was oozing out of his fist, but there was something still in his hand. He willed his fingers open (though he could not seem to get them to separate), and saw the white leather pouch that housed the scale, saw how its glassy edges glittered there, having sliced through the leather and into his palm. He had just time to realize what had happened before the uktena brain took over. In that one moment he hurled himself through the living room window and into the yard. When he touched ground he had no arms and his clothes were in tatters.

Before him the Riders of the Sidhe drew back a fraction, their faces awash with sudden wonder.

Fury took David: blind hate, and with it a joying in power he had never known before.

A glance skyward, veiled in red, but with light stabbing the sky like a searchlight as he jerked his head upright—and found himself rising higher and higher, above the cabin’s roof. And then he was staring down on the riders—open-mouthed horsemen in helmets and swirling cloaks, who were drawing swords and nocking bows but too caught up in wonder to use them.

Riders!

The ones who would kill his friend. His friend above all friends, who had almost died for him. And these folks wanted to kill him. He opened his mouth and screamed, but the scream came out a roar. He tried to run forward, but could not—and found he was coiling instead.

And then David Sullivan, who was rapidly drowning in the half-mad brain of the uktena, looped himself around the house and waited, his yellow eyes ever in motion.

*

“Jesus God,” Alec gasped, staring at the wreckage of the window through which both wind and rain were now whipping. “He always wanted to be a skin-changer, but I never thought he’d get to be one!”

“But
why
?”
Liz cried. “That’s just not the kind of thing he’d do, not now when we need him!”

“Unfortunately,” Calvin said. “I’m afraid there’s a good chance he couldn’t help himself. We talked a little about this while Alec was sick, and he told me how it works. But the real danger is that once it’s happened, you’ve gotta constantly keep in mind that you’re human, or you’ll lose yourself in the beast mind real fast. He had to let go before he could really fight properly when he was a bear—and bears are pretty smart. But as an uktena…who knows? One thing, though: he better change back pronto or we’re
all
goners.”

“But how
did
he change back?” Liz demanded, her face pale with horror.

“
Then
he had water from Atagahi. He’s supposed to have brought some of it back, but I don’t know where it is.”

“I bet I do,” Alec said shakily. “David likes to have all his magic whatsis around him, ’specially if it’s not obvious that’s what they are.”

“Like the ring,” Liz whispered, staring at the band of interlaced silver on her finger.

“Like the scale itself,” Calvin echoed. “I’ve got a twin, you know…I wonder if I could—”

“Don’t you dare!” Liz snapped, grabbing his arm before it could reach the white pouch that hung at his belt.

“No,” Alec agreed. “But as I was about to say, it’s probably in his backpack, which is in my car.”

“So near, yet so far,” Liz groaned.

“And if we got it, what would we do with it?” Calvin asked. “I mean it’s one thing to force-feed a sick guy, and something else entirely to feed a hundred-foot half-crazy monster.”

Alec glared at him. “Well, if you’re supposed to be so damned smart, why don’t you crank up that blessed Cherokee juju you’re always talking about and do something? Maybe—”

A bestial scream from the yard interrupted them. Liz glanced out the window just in time to see the uktena’s head jerk skyward with something writhing in its jaws—something that fell to earth an instant later: the severed hindquarters of a horse. She wondered dully where the rider was, but a sheet of rain obscured her vision. Whatever blood there had been was already on its way to the sea. That was a strange thing to think of: Faery blood at one with Sullivan Branch, which was tributary to the mighty Chattahoochee, which was an Indian name. Suddenly the walls between the lurking Worlds collapsed in her brain and rushed together. This World, the Lands of Men—and Galunlati—and Faerie and all its satellites were one. David—Fionchadd—Calvin, all different, all alike, all boys with flashing eyes and good bods and laughing faces and brilliant minds. Uncle Dale, Nuada, this Uki fellow—Darkthunder, or whatever he was: they were alike as well. This Faery woman who had loved—had
claimed
to love Alec—was even she a shadow? But of whom? It was all too much. With the world gone wild, her senses pounded to numbness, and her emotions tied into knots in the bargain, she just didn’t know.

It was more than she could stand. She retreated to the sofa and sank down there; closed her eyes.
Hold on, girl,
she told herself.
You gotta get yourself together.

A particularly violent thunder clap jolted her from her reverie and made her cry out in alarm. She looked around, saw Uncle Dale and Alec staring out the door—and then
she saw something far more alarming. She had only time to gasp, but by then it was too late.

For while Uncle Dale and Alec had been despairing over David, Calvin had very quietly crept to the fireplace and removed one of the oil lamps from the mantel. Before she knew what he was about, certainly before she could stop him, he had hurled it into the fireplace, where it exploded in a poppy of pungent flame. He flung something else there too: something that glittered white and red and silver as fire took eager hold of it.

Flame filled the room, then; and heat beyond fire, and in that final flash, she had only time to see Calvin fold his arms around himself and hear him cry out in a language she did not know, and he was gone. The word remained behind him, though, echoing through the suddenly silent room.
Hyuntikwala Usunhi.

She wondered what it meant.

Outside the rain had not abated; and the click and slide of glassy scales and the screams of men and horses told of a monster that had not stopped hunting.

Chapter XXVI: Masks

“What was
that
?”
Alec shouted, jerking around and gazing over his shoulder.

“It was Calvin,” Liz managed. “He…he threw something in the fire and…and just
vanished
!”

“
The scale,” Alec stated with conviction, nodding and biting his upper lip. “I’ll bet he’s—”

He had no time to finish, for he was flung to the floor as the uktena slammed into the far side of the house. With it came the creak of tortured timbers, the tinkle of shattering glass, and the resounding crash of something large toppling in the adjoining bedroom. The drip in the ceiling worsened to a steady stream that rapidly grew into a puddle on the now-slanted floor. The mounted deer’s head above the mantel listed precariously.

Alec staggered to his feet, leaning heavily against the sofa while Liz tried to sit up and Uncle Dale steadied the remaining oil lamp, then set it on the floor and wedged it with a stack of Sears catalogs. Every shadow in the room shifted as faces became lit from below, giving them the look of masks in some pagan mystery.

Another thump, not so hard, but more glass broke. A chair toppled over in the kitchen.

“I’m goin’ out there,” Dale announced. “If I don’t, that thing’ll wreck the whole bloomin’ place.”

“No!” Liz cried, rising. “It’s too dangerous. It’ll…it’ll kill you, maybe.”

Bony shoulders shrugged. “Better to die fightin’ then waitin’. ’Sides, that’s still Davy, whatever else it is. I’m bettin’ he won’t hurt me.”

Alec grabbed his arm. “No, you don’t understand! That may be David, but it’s an uktena, too: the jewel in the head alone’ll drive you crazy if you look at it straight. Besides, do you think David would act like that if he was in control? He may be pissed, but he’s no killer! You saw what he did to that horse. That’s the uktena! If David’s in there, he can’t get out!”

“He won’t hurt me, though,” the old man repeated, shaking off Alec’s grip. “I’m countin’ on that. And I’m a right fair poker player.”

“Uncle Dale…”

“I’m sorry, boy, but I gotta try. You stay here; take care of Miss Lizzy. See that the house don’t catch fire.”

“Uncle Dale—” Liz protested.

“No!”

And with that Dale Yearwood Sullivan pushed through the doorway and stepped onto the wreckage of his porch.

*

Tornado
.

That’s what it was like out there, Dale thought, as he let the screen door handle slip through his gnarled fingers and slam closed. It reminded him of the one that had gone through Gainesville back in ’36 and leveled the whole blamed town. The wind howled just as strong, the air felt just as strange: heavy and light at once. And that awful sensation of the whole world out of control and threatening to fly apart. Even the light was the same: that sickly greenish sky awash with lightning and latent power. Before, though, it had been electric lines that spat and arced and hissed, not the skies themselves. And there had been no galloping horses, no shrieking Faery warriors.

And no uktena.

He had never seen anything so huge that yet lived, not even the whales that had followed the ship which had taken him to fight the Reich. Part of it was squirming right below him, too: a section of back as high as the porch and nearly as wide, that slid and twisted by him like a red brick wall dimly marked with man-sized spots. He wondered where the head was, then saw a flash of whiter light over to the left where the vegetable garden once had been.

Poor tittle ’taters,
he thought absently, and headed for the steps. “David!” he shouted, his voice thin and frail above the roar of the weather. “David, boy, it’s me: your Uncle Dale!”

*

But the uktena could not hear him. It thrashed on in its deafness, hunting, scouting out Riders with its piercing eyes, then fixing them with the jewel in its skull and tearing the life from their bodies. Three it had caught already, and their blood tasted good. (No it didn’t, a part protested, a part that was sick at heart, that wanted to gag, that wished at once to break free and to hide itself utterly and never come out again while the greater, wilder self went on with revenge and killing.) Others came nearer to slash at it with swords and stab ineffectually with Faery knives, but those he scarcely noticed, for his scales were hard as the diamonds they resembled and though many a weapon broke on them, not a single blow found his flesh. He was the uktena! He was unstoppable! Those attacks served only to fuel his fury, which in turn redoubled his power—power he could use in his hunting.

*

“Davy boy, stop!”

With that shout, Dale fell silent.
Reckon it ain’t gonna listen,
he told himself when the thing showed no signs of heeding.
All right, then; the danged thing’s still got eyes!

He stepped off the bottom tread into the yard. An hour earlier it had been green grass, bright and healthy, if maybe in need of a mow. Now it was all but gone, beaten into the thick soup of mud that was being churned even deeper and thicker by the rain and the monster’s writhings.

Head must be over there,
he supposed, glancing left to where the white light was brightest. He started that way, but a movement to his other side stopped him. A Rider had ventured closer: the captain, he thought it was. Must be risking a close inspection while the head was occupied elsewhere. But then he saw to his horror that the man had a bow, was raising it and nocking an arrow.