Masked Cowboy (Men of the White Sandy) (28 page)

God
, she nearly sobbed as the guilt washed over her,
if only I’d gone to get Kip earlier. Please, God or the ancestors or whoever is listening, please let her be okay. Please don’t let it be that thing
.

But as much as she wanted to curl up and hide from the horror, she knew that Kip needed her. She had to keep it together if she wanted to keep Kip alive.

Cutting across the land, it took less than ten minutes to get to the valley, and immediately, Mary Beth knew they were too late.

The main drag was filled with people carrying buckets up from the river as the lone fire truck in the county hosed down the flaming remains of the schoolhouse.

Jacob got Mick as close to the schoolhouse as he could before he launched himself into the flames.

“Jacob, no!” Ronny called from his position at the head of the bucket brigade. “You’ll get burnt!”

“He’s got to get Kip, he’s got to get Kip,” Mary Beth prayed. “He’s
got
to get Kip. Please, God, let him get Kip.”

Seconds passed to minutes as the townsfolk pulled buckets from the river and the three volunteer firefighters all worked to douse the flames.

“Please, God,” Mary Beth prayed as Jezebel panted beneath her, “Please, God. Let him get Kip.”

“There he is!” Ronny shouted as he threw a bucket of water in the doorway. The flames died down just enough for Jacob to run through them, his ankles smoking as he gasped for air. He threw the body he carried on the ground.

It wasn’t Kip.

“Mrs. Browne?” Ronny screamed at her. “Are you okay?”

“She’s dead. It cut her throat,” Jacob sputtered as Ronny threw a bucket of water over his head. Jacob sizzled as the water evaporated from the heat of his clothes.

“What?” Ronny took a step back, paling. “
It
? It
who
cut her throat?”

For a split second, Jacob dripped with sorrow as the water ran off his hair. But the look vanished, replaced with a cold, calculating fury. “Ronny,” he growled, “lock everything down. It’s got Kip.”

“It
who
?” Ronny demanded again. “Jacob, this shit isn’t funny, it—”

Jacob threw himself back onto Mick. “Shoot to kill, Ronny. I’m going to get her back.”

“Where are we going?” Mary Beth shouted as they headed back out of the valley, leaving the fire and the dead teacher behind them at a full gallop. Storm clouds billowed up out of nowhere, darkening the sky in seconds.

“Shit.” He slowed. “It’s got her and I don’t even know—”

The sky flashed with lightning like a bolt of inspiration. The scene of the crime—a dark house with dark stains on the floor. Whatever this thing was, it’d want to finish
what
it started,
where
it started it. Mary Beth grabbed Jacob’s arm. “Her house,” she said. “It took her to her old house.”

Jacob nodded and urged Mick back up to a dead run.

“How long?” she shouted over the wind rushing up with the surprise storm.

“Thirty, forty minutes,” he called back. “It had maybe a twenty, thirty-minute head start.”

“Go faster,” Mary Beth whispered to Jezebel. “Go faster.”

The land flew by as the horses raced against the clock. Tree limbs reached out, smacking her in the face and arms, but she paid no heed to the cuts. A few times, Jezebel started to stumble, but Mary Beth counter-shifted her weight, keeping the horse up by sheer will alone. The clouds burst open, making the darkening night even harder to see through, but the lightning that scored the sky was just enough that she could keep track of Jacob urging Mick on ahead of her.

Mary Beth wasn’t sure where they were, but when they splashed through the swelling creek bed, she knew they were close.

The house was just over the next ridge.

Jacob pulled the wheezing Mick into a slow walk, his gun drawn, his ears listening as they approached the silent and dark house.

Mary Beth looked up at the wet, ink-black sky, the lightning jumping from cloud to cloud, and the earth shook from the thunder.

There was a sound off to the right from deeper in the woods. In the blink of an eye, Jacob was on the ground, racing toward it, gun and knife drawn, looking for all the world like a true Lakota warrior.

And Mary Beth was alone on Jezebel, the tired animal’s sides still heaving at the effort. The lightning cracked again. Kip had to be here—didn’t she? And if she was here, she’d be inside.

Mary Beth tucked her knife in the back of her waistband and slowly walked toward the house, her heart pounding so loudly in her ears she couldn’t hear anything else.

The unlocked door swung open, and there was Kip, nearly glowing white in the dark room as she sat silent and still.

“Jesus, Kip—” she rushed up to the little girl sitting motionless on the bed, “—are you all right?”

As her words hung in the air, the taste—rotting sage and flesh and unwashed fur—filled her mouth, gagging her.

No
, she thought as the door slammed shut behind her. As an evil laugh filled the room, she knew it was too late.

The shadow had her right where it wanted her.

Mary Beth spun, but she couldn’t see anything but a huge black shape moving across the room, a flash of lightning catching on the polished blade.

“Show yourself,” she screeched. “You’re no bear. Bears don’t have knives, and bears don’t laugh.”

“I am the
Waka Sica
,” the thing rumbled, “and I have come for your soul.”

She barely had time to think,
What the hell is a
Waka Sika? before it flipped on the light. Mary Beth recoiled in sheer horror. Before her, a foot-long knife poised at the ready, was a seven-foot tall creature with the head and fur of a buffalo. The buffalo face was distorted, with the nose pushed to one side and what looked a hell of a lot like canine teeth jutting out from the lower lip.

Mary Beth tripped backwards over the chairs, nearly sitting on the immobile Kip.

“Kip, get up,” she said, her tone urgent. “Get up and get behind me.”

“She cannot save you now,” the
Waka Sica
said with a sneer. “She will be mine. When I possess the holy woman, I will
know
.”

“When she’s yours? Jesus Christ, don’t you dare touch her!” Mary Beth screamed.

The
Waka Sica
laughed, slicing the air with its knife in preparation, like it was showing off.

“You lay one single hoof or claw or whatever the hell it is you have on her, and I’ll kill you a thousand times over,” she squawked, sounding anything but brave.

The
Waka Sica
laughed again, but this time it did something else.

With its free hand or claw or whatever that was, it grabbed at its waist like it was hitching up its pants, slowly rubbing its fur up and down over what might have been its crotch.

Mary Beth blinked and then blinked again. She’d seen that gesture before. Only one man hitched up his pants like that.

Buck McGillis.

“Buck?” she whispered, unable to believe that it might just be a man—an insane man, sure—but just a man under that hideous hide.

The thing froze.

“Buck McGillis? What the hell are you doing? Have you lost your mind? You are terrorizing this little girl!”

The deformed hoof-claw thing flipped the hood of the mask off, and it really was Buck standing there, his knife still flashing as his eyes bugged out of his head.

“I’m going to kill you slowly, you nosy bitch,” he growled. “I’m going to kill you right in front of her, and then I’m going to make her drink your blood.”

“Are you fucking insane?” Clearly the answer was yes. “What is wrong with you?”

“I will own the Lakota,” he snarled, taking a menacing step toward her, the knife poised higher to strike.

For a second, Mary Beth was sixteen again, trapped beneath Skeevy Brian Greevy while he pawed at her.
Paralyzed
. Even though she’d crushed his nuts when he’d let go of her to try and undo his pants, the thing that she’d always hated—
always
—had been that she’d let him pin her in the first place. She hadn’t fought back immediately—just like the last time Buck had tried to assault her. Her mistake both times had been to try and make nice, to talk her way out of it. It hadn’t worked with Skeevy Greevy and it hadn’t worked with Buck. In fact, if it hadn’t been for Jacob and his horse, she would have been in deep shit.

Just like she was right now.

Well, fuck it. She wasn’t about to try and make nice, not when it was both her and Kip’s lives on the line.

For only the second time since Mary Beth had known her, Kip squeaked behind her. It was a noise of pure terror.

Not happening, sweetie
.
He’s not going to get you
.

Mary Beth slipped her hand behind her back and felt where she’d jammed her Bowie knife into her waistband.

The touch of the handle brought Mary Beth back to the here and now. She shook off the helplessness of a child—Kip’s helplessness as much as hers—and grabbed the knife.

Wait for him to get closer. That’s what she needed to do—wait for her opening and then take it.

But Mary Beth couldn’t just stand there and wait. No, her mouth began to motor as she poured out all of her fury at the position this man had put her in. This man was demented. Demented and armed.

“Seriously, Buck, you are bringing new meaning to the term criminally insane, and your impression of Andre the Giant leaves a lot to be desired. I mean, have you even seen
The Princess Bride
?”

“You talk now, but wait until I cut your throat, you wench,” he growled. “Then you won’t even be able to scream.”

“If you think hurting her is going to help you take over the world, you’ve got another think coming,” she mocked as Buck’s face twisted with rage, making him barely recognizable. “You think she’s some mystic or something, but she’s just a little girl, and when I drag your sick ass back to town, they’re going to lynch you for what you tried to do, what you did to Mrs. Browne.”

“I am the
Waka Sica
!” he screamed, his voice so loud it shook the thin curtains over the bed. “My father was the
Waka Sica
before me, and his father before him. It is my destiny to destroy her! We have stolen souls for generations, waiting and watching for the chance to destroy the Lakota!”

Do villains really do this, this exposition thing
? Mary Beth wondered as he shouted at her.
I thought that was just in James Bond movies
.

“We knew when the white child came, we would finally be able to wipe out this miserable people and take what was ours!” The words ended in a roar so powerful that Mary Beth had to fight the urge to cover her ears.

She couldn’t let go of the knife handle.

Where was Jacob? She had to keep talking, keep him distracted until Jacob could get there. “She’s no mystic and you’re nothing but a bully. And you know what, Buck? All bullies have one thing in common. Tiny dicks.”

That did it. Buck lunged at her, but she effortlessly stepped to the side, pulling Kip with her. Now their backs were facing the door, and Buck was pushing them towards it. Nobody would be proud of her. She’d pointed herself to the one and only exit.

So she didn’t know what the hell a
Waka Sica
was. All she had to do was believe that she could get them out of this. “I believe,” Mary Beth muttered, a sense of calm radiating through her at the words. “I believe.”

“You better believe,” Buck snarled, misunderstanding her. “She will bear my child, the next
Waka Sica
who will rule this world.”

“No way, you freak,” she replied, unnaturally calm despite the revulsion that coursed through her stomach. “She’s seven. She’s only seven!”

“I can be patient. I have waited so long, a few more years won’t hurt anything.” He laughed again, evil and haughty. Abruptly, his laugh died, and a perverted look that might have been desire flashed in his eyes as he looked Mary Beth up and down. “But you—I don’t have to wait for you. Yes,” he nodded, pleased with his new idea, “I think I’ll show Kip what I’m going to do to her when I do it to you first.” Mary Beth’s stomach tried to turn, but she was in this weird zen state.

Because she believed. Suddenly, Buck looked more like Buck than he had all night.

“Nobody says no to Buck McGillis.”

Mary Beth saw the regular bully who, somewhere along the line, had mutated into a sociopath serial killer.

“N-O spells no—didn’t your mom ever teach you that?” she sang.

“My father took her soul as soon as I was free of her!” he roared, morphing back into that not-quite-human thing again.

“So what you’re saying is you’ve got mother issues,” she taunted, wondering how much closer he needed to be as he quickly covered the two remaining paces between them.

But she didn’t worry. She believed.

Buck’s knife flashed toward her face. Her instincts were to duck forward, but she knew that’d leave Kip exposed, so she leaned back. Mary Beth heard his knife slice the air so close to her ear that it burned, but she didn’t care. Kip was safe behind her as they took another small step back toward the door.
Where the hell is Jacob?
she thought again as Buck swung his blade back. It passed less than an inch from her nose.