Shotgun Sorceress (29 page)

Charlie felt completely and utterly numb. Defeated. She put everything back exactly the way she’d found it and reassumed her perch on the bed. A few minutes later, David came in, freshly dressed and toweling off his short brown hair.

“You’re right, I shouldn’t be nervous about Corpus Christi,” she announced. “I changed my mind; I’ll go to the tournament.”

His face broke into a broad grin, and he leaned over and gave her a quick hug. “That’s great! We’ll have a terrific time, I bet.”

In her mind, Charlie could see David, the only real friend she’d ever had, being torn apart in the waves. Her shadow felt smug, satisfied.

Was her whole life going to be like this?

    Despite her depression, Charlie did well at the tournament, placed tenth in her belt class out of a field of seventy competitors. David did even better, placing third. In fact, most of Master Kim’s students did quite well, so he took all eight of them out for pizza that night, and drove them to the beach in his big van the next morning.

The sky was overcast, and though it was a hot day, the strong, salt-greasy wind from the ocean carried a chilly bite.

“Watch out for undertow!” Master Kim admonished as they piled out of the van in their flip-flops and big T-shirts. “It take you down like
that.
” He hit his palm with his fist for emphasis. “And watch out for what lifeguard say. If he yell ‘shark,’ get out of water, fast as you can.”

Charlie walked across the sand and set down her beach bag. She pulled out the single-edged razor blade she’d hidden in the folds of her towel. Hiding it in her hand, she kicked off her flip-flops and headed out to meet the waves.

David had run ahead of her and was already paddling around, happy as an otter. The water was dark, a gray like decaying headstones. Then Charlie waded out away from the others until she was in chest-deep.

He’s in over his head
, her shadow whispered.
Let me have him
.

“No.”

For a moment, nothing happened as her shadow considered this new rebellion. Then Charlie felt a sharp cramp, deep in her womb.

Give him to me
. The shadow’s little-girl voice was ominous.

The cramp got worse, and bile rose in Charlie’s throat. “No.”

I saved you!
the shadow shrieked inside her head.
Without me, you’d be less than nothing, and
this
is how you repay me?

“Maybe I
am
nothing. But it’s better than what
you
are.”

I’m your God, and don’t you forget that
.

The cramping became a wrenching pain in her stomach and intestines, and she cried out.

“Charlie?” David called, paddling toward her. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, please don’t come over here,” she managed to call back.

You’ll do as I say. And today we’re going to start with that little boyfucker over there
.

“You haven’t proved to me that he’s done more than look, and even if he has, I won’t let you. Not today.”

She began to slit her left wrist with the razor blade. Her blood was invisible in the dark water. “I’d rather die than live like this. You’re not getting my permission to kill, never ever again. You asked me what I wanted, and now I want you to
go away.
”

The shadow shrieked inside her head, the pain almost unbearable. A big, sandpapery shape bumped up against her body. Sharp jaws clamped down on her bleeding wrist.

It yanked her down beneath the waves and shoved her into the sandy bottom. Through the cloudy water, she could see the pearly dead eyes of the big shark holding her down. The shark’s wide, razored mouth was inches from her face.

Give. Me. The. Boy
.

Charlie kicked against the shark, churning up the sand, sharp shells and rocks cutting her legs. With her free hand, she beat against the shark’s snout, but the huge fish wouldn’t budge. Her eyes burned, and her lungs screamed for air.

She saw movement in the corner of her eye. David was diving down toward her.

“No!” she tried to scream, but all that came out was her last bit of air in a long string of bubbles.

The shark released her and rose to meet David. She pushed off the bottom, trying to reach them, but she’d gone too long without a breath. She blacked out.

    Charlie came to on a stretcher on the sand. Her left arm was splinted and wrapped in bloody gauze. Master Kim and two paramedics hovered over her. Kim’s face was grave.

“Where’s David?” she whispered.

“I’m right here.” He pushed through the crowd and knelt beside her. There wasn’t a scratch on him. “Everything’s gonna be okay.”

    Her shadow seemed to be gone. But the shark’s attack crushed bones in her wrist and forearm and severed a couple of tendons. The doctors said she’d need more surgeries and it would be at least a year before she regained full use of her hand. She felt weaker than she ever had before.

David came to visit her in the hospital the next day. He could barely sit still, and his eyes glowed with fever.

“It told me that I could save you, just by wanting to,” he said after the nurse left.

“It?” Charlie felt a deep chill.

“Yeah. It’s like … it’s incredible. I can kick more ass than Bruce Lee and Batman combined! I just have to be near water, and no one can stop me.”

“Oh God, David …” Charlie trailed off as it all sank in.

Her best friend seemed not to hear her. “I’m gonna go away, maybe to New York or Los Angeles. I just thought you should know, ’cause we’re buddies and all. I don’t need school, I don’t need Master Kim. Now I can do
anything I want.
”

“David, no, please, don’t do this, listen to me—”

“Sorry, Charlie, I gotta cruise.” He planted a quick, hard kiss on her forehead.

And then he was gone.

Charlie lay in bed, listening to her heart pound. Between the beats, she thought she could hear the shadow’s little-girl laughter.

chapter
twenty-six

Grave Matters

P
al and I looked at each other; clearly the shadow was some sort of devil. Whether it was the kind we could deal with was another matter entirely.

Charlie crushed her smoldering cigarette stub in her lunch plate and lit up another. “I thought that would be the last I’d ever see of David, you know? And it was, until about six weeks ago. I was on night patrol near the fence when he popped up out of nowhere. He looks so sketchy now, I barely recognized him.”

“What did he want?” I asked.

“He told me how he and the shadow had gone to L.A. for a while but they came back here—how did he put it?—because ‘the darkness was coming’ or something like that. And even though the shadow’s a lot stronger now, it and David got stuck here like everyone else. He told me that he and the shadow are helping Miko. Before, when she popped out people’s souls, their bodies might live on for a little while but then they’d die. The shadow gave him the power to turn them into zombies that she could control. They’ll stay alive for months if you give them food and water. And so Miko let him and the shadow do pretty much what they wanted—I guess the shadow mostly wants living bodies to eat—as long as she got enough zombies to do what she wanted.”

“But why did he come to you that night?”

Charlie shrugged. “Why
that
night? I dunno. But what he wanted was for me to join him and come back to the shadow. He said that he’d been going into abandoned houses and stealing money and gold and stuff that people had left behind, and he had millions of dollars in cash stashed away. He said that I’d always been his best buddy and he wanted to share the loot with me. And if I helped them, he’d make sure I got out alive, and once we got out we’d buy a mansion in Beverly Hills and have movie stars over for parties and all kinds of other crap.”

“What did you say to him?”

Charlie looked indignant. “What do you
think
I said to him? I told him to go to hell and walked away. No way I was going back to the shadow. No way I was helping Miko. Not
ever.
”

“Do you know where they are now?”

She nodded. “Civic League Park. There’s a water lily garden there. Big ponds. The shadow’s living in one of them, and David’s in the gardener’s hut.”

I ate some peanuts and pondered everything she’d told us. “If we could cut off Miko’s meat puppet supply, well, that
would
be a wedge we could use against her. But I need your help. If we’re going to stop David and the shadow, I need to know that you’re not going to back out at the last minute. I need to know you won’t decide to give up and surrender to Miko like the major did.”

Now the girl looked downright angry. “I put those zombies out of their misery for you, didn’t I? I’ve been doing horrible stuff like that for more than a year. If I were in the army, I’d have done my tour by now, but it ain’t over, and I ain’t giving up. I used to think I was weak, but I
know
I’m a strong person now. And if you need proof, just look at all the
other
people who gave up. And
I’m
still here.”

She paused, then continued, speaking more softly. “Do y’all know where I should be right now? I should be at my aunt’s house, visiting on summer break from NYU. I got my acceptance letter right before everything went crazy here. But I can’t ever see her again. She and my uncle and everybody else in my family are dead. Because of the shadow, and because of Miko. I’ll
never
give myself up to a monster ever again.”

“Okay, then.” I sat back in my chair. “Come upstairs with us. I need to get a little more information, and then we can figure out what our next move is.”

    My father was quick to answer his mirror. I was beginning to wonder if he ever left his workshop. He looked grave after I told him about Miko taking Cooper and the Warlock hostage.

“I hoped that you might be able to avoid a direct confrontation with her, but it seems she has left you no choice,” he said. “I have some information that I hope will help you. A soul harvester like Miko would find much better hunting in large cities. I did a series of forensic spells to try to discover why she came to a town as small as Cuchillo. And while much of the divination I gleaned was muddled, all of the spells turned up the name of a dead man: Henry Schleicher. I believe his bones have a tale to tell, and the information within his story may give you the means to defeat her.”

“Is he a meat puppet, or is he in the ground?” I thought of the old man I’d seen in Miko’s memories.

“His body has been laid to a Christian’s proper rest, although I don’t believe his soul has met a comfortable fate.”

    “How many graveyards are in this town?” I asked Charlie when I came back to my body.

“Well, there’s a Jewish cemetery, I don’t know exactly where, and a Catholic cemetery over by Sacred Heart, but the main cemetery is off Avenue N,” she replied.

“Is the main cemetery very far away?”

“Just a couple of miles … why?”

“We’ve got a body to dig up.”

    Once we’d gathered some digging tools, hand-crank lanterns, and a couple of burlap sacks, and had gotten my shotgun and Charlie’s AK-47 out of the dorm’s weapons check, Pal flew us and the black kitten he’d claimed to the fifty-acre Fairmount Cemetery. We landed in the courtyard beside the cemetery office, and I broke into the building to rifle through the filing cabinet. The graveyard was laid out in different numbered blocks, and after a bit of hunting I discovered that he was buried in no. 84, the section reserved for World War II veterans.

The sun was starting to fade below the horizon as we finally found his plot. His marble headstone had a purple heart symbol etched on it, and the date said he’d died nearly a decade before at the age of seventy-four.

“We need to get back before it gets really dark; this place isn’t very—”

“Defensible. I
know
. So let’s get to digging.” I turned to Pal. “Unless you know a spell for this kind of thing?”

Pal cocked his head thoughtfully. “You know, I think I do.”

He began to play a new calliope tune. A few seconds later, the ground began to shake, and a crack formed in the earth covering Henry Schleicher’s grave. The soil bubbled and foamed as if it had been turned to liquid, and suddenly the plain black casket bobbed to the surface. The soil went still and firm again beneath it, and the casket settled slightly.

“That’s hella slick,” I told him.

He took a bow.

I hefted the pick and used it to crack open the lid. The corpse inside was little more than a skeleton in a stained army uniform; short strands of white hair still adorned the parchmentlike scalp adhering to the top of the skull.

I touched one of Henry’s desiccated fingers; instantly, my mind was filled with his nightmares and memories of his death, still painful and bright even after ten years in the dry darkness:

—Miko pulled me tight, her breath hot and ragged in my ear. As I gasped for air, I felt a strange tugging in my chest, my testicles, my mind. Something deep inside started to peel free. “Oh yes, please, yes …” she whispered. My soul tore away. Her body convulsed against mine, and she let out a hoarse, animal groan of delight.—

—I knelt beside an eighteen-year-old soldier with a
chest full of shrapnel, and I couldn’t stop the bleeding. I could hear the Zero making another pass over the island. The kid was dying, no matter what I did. The plane was zooming closer, and I knew we had to get to cover.—

I shoved his memories aside and regained enough focus to jerk my hand away, breathing hard. “He’s the guy, all right.”

Using one of the burlap sacks as a mitt, I reached back in, grabbed the skeleton’s closest wrist, and pulled. There was a crack as the bones came loose at the elbow. I pulled the half arm into the bag and tied it off.

“I’ve got what I came for.” I heaved the casket lid closed. “Can you put him back where we found him, Pal?”