The Burning Time (35 page)

“John! Do something!”

Danni’s cry for help galvanized John into action. He ran forward and leaped onto the demon’s back, wrapping his arms around the thick, scaled neck and squeezing as hard as he could. The demon bellowed in surprise and spun around in circles. John clawed at the creature’s thick hide, but it was like trying to dig through armor plating. His grip gave way and he found himself flying through the air. He landed awkwardly on his left hand, crying out as pain crawled up his arm. He rolled over and struggled to his knees, holding his injured wrist to his chest, expecting to see the monster charging at him.

Instead, the Alligator demon had already turned its attention back to Danni and Mitch. Its meaty tail whipping back and forth with a sound like a cracking whip, the demon emitted a growling, gurgling laugh as it advanced, clawed hands opening and closing in anticipation.

Have to do something. Anything.

With his good hand, John reached into a pocket and pulled out a silver medallion, praying the metal worked as well on Native American demons as it did on other evil beings. Gritting his teeth against the ache in his wrist, John charged the Gator Daddy, slammed the medallion against its neck, and watched in horror as the coin fell harmlessly from the thick, scaly hide. Intent on avoiding the creature’s teeth and claws, he forgot that alligators carried a third weapon.

The beast’s tail caught him across both thighs with bone-bruising force. John screamed as he tumbled over, his legs and wrist sending out bursts of agony each time one of them hit the ground. He’d barely come to a stop when claws tore through his clothes and pierced skin. Then he was flying once more. He hit the ground hard, knocking his breath from his lungs.

“John! Help me! Don’t let it kill me!”

Danni’s voice reached him through the black fog surrounding his brain. He tried to move, but every part of his body felt broken and battered. Darkness closed in, narrowing his vision to a pinpoint. There was a sensation of falling, and Danni’s cries grew distant.
“...save me. Don’t let me die...hate you...”

What was that?
John’s mind struggled to make sense of things.
Something wasn’t right. Why would Danni say that? And why wasn’t Mitch saying anything?

John fought the darkness but the pain and dizziness had him feeling like he was trying to run through a spinning cement mixer in the dark. He focused his concentration.
Not right. Something...

Her cries for help came back to him.
“Help me” “Save me”

Me.
Not
us
.

I’ve never heard Danni put herself before Mitch.

I’ve been —

A massive blow struck his head and the darkness claimed him.

*   *   *

Danni’s first thought as they entered the park was they’d arrived too late, that John must have failed. The fair grounds were in complete turmoil. Screaming people, trapped by John’s magic circle, ran in all directions, searching for a way out. Many of the booths had fallen over or been destroyed, and several were on fire. Dozens of bloodied bodies lay on the ground. Danni couldn’t tell if they were dead or alive, but she refused to stop and check, even when she recognized people she knew.

“We’ve got to find John,” she shouted over the general bedlam. Holding Mitch’s hand, she led the way through the madness. Without warning, they reached an area clear of people, the change so sudden she stumbled and almost fell. When she saw what was happening, she nearly collapsed again as her legs went weak.

John hung motionless in the air, several feet off the ground. His head snapped back and forth and his body jerked as if invisible hands were slapping him and shaking him at the same time. Suddenly, he flew backward and crashed into a table filled with desserts. The table broke, sending brownies and cupcakes everywhere.

John didn’t move.

On the other side of the clearing, an aged version Cyrus Christian stood with his head facing up to the bloated, evil clouds and his hands moving in strange patterns. He shouted something in a language Danni couldn’t understand, and an earthquake force shook the earth.

“Hurry, before he sees us.” Mitch tugged at her and held up John’s bag. She remembered why they were there.

Forcing her trembling legs to move, Danni followed Mitch across the circle. Christian shouted their names, and gale-force winds whipped at them as they ran.

“Faster!” Dust burned their eyes and stung their skin, and more than once the wind threatened to lift them off the ground, but Mitch’s grip never loosened until they were crouched next to John’s prone form. Mitch dug through the bag, mumbling about medicines, while Danni checked John’s breathing.

“He’s alive!” she said, just as Mitch handed her a small, brown bottle.

“Try this.”

“What is it?” she asked, fumbling the cap off with shaking fingers.

“I don’t know! I asked for something to wake people up.”

The cap came off and odor of smelling salts hit Danni like a punch in the face. She waved the bottle under John’s nose and his eyes sprang open. He coughed and moaned at the same time.

“You’re...not real...I couldn’t...save you.” His eyelids fluttered and closed.

“John!” She gently slapped his cheeks. “Wake up.”

Danni peered over her shoulder, expecting to see Christian coming after them, but he was still shouting to the sky. The earth continued to rumble and quake. More booths toppled over, and people shouted for help as they ran past, making Danni wonder if they were in more danger from being trampled than from Christian’s black magic.

“Danni.” John’s hand tried to grip hers, slid off. She looked down and saw his eyes were open again. “If it’s really you, get out of here.”

Before Danni could respond, Mitch interrupted. “John. We got your bag back. You can use it to—Ow!” Mitch cried out as a piece of plywood hurtled into him.

“Mitch!” Danni let go of John and went to her brother.

“I’m okay,” he said, sitting up. His glasses hung from one ear and his arm was scraped and bloodied, but he looked relatively unharmed.

Returning her attention to John, she found him smiling through the dirt and blood covering his face.

“It really is you. Give me your hand. You, too, Mitch.” He held his hands out to them.

“What about your bag?” Mitch asked. “Don’t you need it?”

John shook his head.

“All I need is the two of you.”

*   *   *

They’re alive! Really alive!
John had opened his eyes to see Danni and Mitch staring down at him. At first, he’d been sure it was another of the Trickster’s illusions, illusions he should have expected. It was what the Ancient One did best, playing games with peoples’ minds and turning them against each other.

Even after touching Danni, he hadn’t been sure, not until he saw her reaction when Mitch got hurt. That was where Christian had made his mistake. Without the capacity for compassion himself, he couldn’t incorporate it into the illusions he created.

At that moment, John had known how to stop his old enemy.

Clasping their hands tightly in his, John stood up, pulling them along with him. He felt their pain, their fear, their confusion. But most of all, he felt their strength, strength that came from their innate goodness and the love they had for each other. And for him. He felt it, and he let it revitalize him, heal him, charge him like a living battery.

Then he channeled it into the spell handed down to him by his mother.

“Your time here is over, Trickster. Your Gods are the Gods of darkness, of evil, of selfishness. They cannot stand against true goodness. I banish you by all your names. Trickster, Coyote, Anansi. Huehuecoyotl, Puck, and Seth. Eris, Iwa, Amaguq. Uncle Tompa, Samedi, and Crow. And all your other faces. You are not welcome in this place. Begone!”

The ancient, wizened thing that had been Cyrus Christian screamed. His eyes flashed red in time with the lighting streaking across the sky, and the ground rumbled and shook harder than ever. “You will not win, John Root. I’ll destroy you like I did your bitch-dams before you.”

Blinding light flashed as lightning exploded a nearby popcorn booth. Danni and Mitch cried out, but John held their hands tight and began his banishment again. This time, the effect on Christian was visible. He fell to his knees, his body jerking back and forth as if sitting on live wires. John started his banishment for a third time, and Christian’s skin split open in a dozen places, spraying thick, reddish-brown fluids onto the ground.

A figure appeared next to Danni. Distracted by the movement, John turned and saw Sheriff Showalter aiming his gun at Christian’s twitching form.

“No!” John cried, but it was too late. Showalter pulled the trigger, the sound of the report lost amid the deafening thunder of the lightning storm.

Christian fell backward. At the same time, the thunder and lightning ended and the ground went still.

In the sudden silence, Showalter’s voice sounded too loud.

“That’ll take care of the fucker.”

Letting go of Danni and Mitch’s hands, John turned on Showalter. “You don’t know what you’ve done. You can’t kill—”

Without warning, the earth heaved beneath them, sending everyone tumbling to the ground. A terrible grinding, crashing sound, like a thousand dump trucks dropping rocks onto cement, drowned out the terrified cries of the crowd as the entire park shuddered.

Long, jagged cracks opened in the ground, spreading out from Christian’s prone form. People scrambled frantically to avoid the rapidly-widening crevices, but dozens still tumbled into endless darkness.

John grabbed Danni and Mitch and ran for the entrance. Behind them, Showalter swore as he fell into one of the faults, which promptly closed again like a huge, earthen mouth biting a gingerbread cookie in half.

“What’s happening?” Danni had to shout to be heard.

“Shooting Christian broke my spell.”

“But he’s—”

A thunderous roar cut off Danni’s words. The bellow sounded again, erupting from the Stygian depths of all the fractures at once. John stopped and pushed Danni and Mitch behind him, reacting instinctively to the primordial sounds rising from beneath them.

A tentacle, fat as a telephone pole and twice as long, sprang from a crevice, accompanied by the stench of dead, rotting fish. More python-like appendages joined it, snaking up from holes and cracks throughout the fair grounds. They whipped back and forth in search of prey, their rows of sucker-shaped mouths drooling greenish, foul-smelling fluids.

“Behold Asuggath!”

Christian’s voice confirmed John’s fears.

Asuggath. One of Chaos’s harbingers. Compared to the Elder Gods, it was a child, a pet even. But to humankind, it would be as if hell itself had come to Earth. A distant cousin to the monster that had taken residence in the river, it dwarfed that creature the way a Tyrannosaurus would tower over a lizard.

John ducked as a probing limb angled toward them. Nearby, another of the tentacles wrapped itself around a fat woman in a blue dress, cutting off her screams in mid-shriek as it squeezed so hard blood and organs erupted from her mouth. The moment it slid back into the darkness, another rose to take its place.

John put his mouth close to Danni’s ear. “Get out of here. Go as far as you can.”

Danni shook her head. “We’re not leaving you.”

“If you want to live, you will. I have to finish this, one way or the other.” John wrapped his arms around her and Mitch, squeezed them to his chest. “I love you both. But this has to end. Go.”

He stepped back. Mitch was crying and shaking his head, and Danni had to hold him to keep him from running to John.

Tears streaming down her cheeks, Danni leaned forward and gave John a furious kiss he wished would go on forever but which ended too soon.

“John, I want you to know—”

The rest of Danni’s words were swept away as a massive weight crashed into John, knocking his breath away. Tons of cold, slimy rubber enfolded him, squeezing the air from his lungs and threatening to crush his ribs. Fiery pain lanced through his body as miniature teeth sawed through cloth and skin.

“John!”

Danni’s shout faded away as the fair flew past him. He realized the unseen beast was dragging him back to the crater from which it had come. John struggled to free himself, but his arms were pinned tight, preventing him from reaching anything in his pockets. Blood from dozens of quarter-sized bites soaked his clothes, and he thanked the Lord that he’d been caught by the tip of the appendage, were the muscles were weakest. Even so, he knew he wouldn’t last long.

He heard Christian’s mocking laughter. “Good-bye, John Root! Tell your mother I said hello!”

John saw the impenetrable black of a crevice growing closer.

This is it. I’ve failed.

Mother, I’m sorry.

He closed his eyes. The tentacle twitched and he felt himself falling. He opened his mouth to scream.

And hit hard on his back.

“John, move your ass! Hurry!”

John opened his eyes and found himself inches away from the edge of the abyss. Every shake of the ground threatened to roll him into the opening. Although confused as to how he’d gotten there, he pushed himself away and got to his feet.

Mitch and Danni stood nearby. Mitch still gripped John’s black bag in one hand.

In his other, he held a brown bottle that John immediately recognized. It had been his mother’s, and her mother’s before that.

Holy water mixed with the powdered bones of a Saint. The one thing that could bring pain to a minion of the Elder Gods.

I’m glad I taught that boy how to use the bag!

John turned and saw the tentacle that had held him. It lay on the ground, twitching in erratic spasms. The rubbery skin was burnt and blistered. Greenish-yellow ichor dripped from the wounds.

Returning his gaze to Danni, he shouted. “I told you to leave.”

“We can’t.” Her expression was a mix of relief and terror. “The circle.”