Witch's Canyon (36 page)

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“Ross always called it the ‘dead zone,’ ” Juliet said.

She was leading Dean and Baird to a section of her backyard. “Because nothing would ever grow there.” It all looked like snow to Dean. She seemed to realize the same thing, because she stopped and shoved a mass of curls away from her face. “It’s right around here,” she said. “It’s just bare earth, no grass or anything. Not even weeds would come up there, and they’re unstoppable here after the summer rains.” She, Dean, and Baird all held shovels hastily gathered from the barn. “Guess we shovel some snow first,” he said. He dug his tool’s blade under the snow and tossed aside a little of it. More fell into the gap he had made. “Thing’s not a very good snow shovel, though.”

“There’s one of those in the barn, too,” Juliet said.

“Do you want me to—”

“Never mind. We just have to move enough to lo-342 SUPERNATURAL

cate this dead zone. From your description, it sounds like the witch’s burial site to me.”

“The previous owners pointed it out to us but said they couldn’t explain it, either,” Juliet said. “They showed us the outline of an old cabin’s foundation here—you can still see some of the stones when they’re not covered in snow.” She pointed toward one side of her house. “The cabin would have been about there, just beside the current house. This would have been—what?—forty feet away.”

“Far enough for a grave site, I guess. If you weren’t too picky.” Dean dragged his shovel across the ground, pushing snow away. He could see the bare dirt beneath it now, right where she’d said it was.

It didn’t even look like healthy dirt. No insects had made holes in it, no worms had aerated it, in more than a hundred years.

“Gotta be the place,” he said. “Let’s dig.” He shoved the blade almost straight down into the dirt, pressing it deeper with his foot.

As he did, a vulture with huge black wings and a knobby pink head swooped toward him from nowhere, talons out. He ducked and it whistled just over his head, then flapped away with great wing beats.

“Ugly-ass buzzard almost parted my hair,” he said, turning out the earth he had dug up. His shotgun was close at hand; he didn’t have any illusions that the vulture would be the witch’s last defender.

Nor were his expectations wrong.

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The three of them had been digging for several minutes when four arrows
thwipped
toward them.

Dean released his shovel—an arrow quavering in its wooden handle—and dove for the shotgun. He rolled into a prone firing position, located the attackers and fired twice. When the smoke cleared and the sound of the shots faded, the four were gone. Dean rose, scanned for any more spirit attackers, and reached for his shovel again.

Harmon Baird fell across the dead zone. “I’m hit,” he said, his voice strained. He turned so Dean could see the arrow jutting from his left thigh. “It’s just a fl esh wound.”

“Flesh wound my ass,” Dean said. He handed the shotgun to Juliet and went to the old man’s side.

Baird was trembling, his eyes filling with tears. Dean turned his leg, looking at both sides. The arrow hadn’t passed all the way through. He grabbed the arrow’s shaft, right where it met the man’s leg. “This is gonna hurt,” he warned. Pressing down on Baird’s thigh, he tugged the arrow free, back out the way it had gone in.

Baird shrieked and clawed at his leg. Dean kept one hand there, pressing down on the wound until Baird stopped writhing. “Keep pressure on it,” Dean said. “We’ll get you patched up as soon as we can, but right now we’ve got to fi nish this.” He and Juliet returned to digging while Baird stood watch—
sat
watch, rather—with Dean’s shotgun across his lap.

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“The witch’s spirits must be busy somewhere else,” Dean said as they worked. “I thought we’d have a lot more trouble than this.”

“Maybe she was counting on the wolf defeating us,” Juliet replied.

“Wolf couldn’t even take you,” Dean said with a smile. “It—”

His shovel
chunked
against something hard. “I think we’re there.”

“Not a minute too soon for me,” Juliet said.

“You got her?” Baird asked.

“I think so.” Dean threw more dirt out of the hole, and scraped his shovel across the hard surface. “It’s wood.”

“At least they buried her in a coffi n,” Juliet said.

“From what you told me I half expected they’d just throw her into a hole.”

“She may have been a nasty old witch, but she was still the ranch owner’s mother,” Dean speculated.

“If he’d hated her that much, he never would have brought her out from back East, much less built a special place for her.”

“I thought that was because he didn’t want her around.”

“He probably didn’t. But it also helped keep her out of trouble, by eliminating most of her contact with other people. Isolating her here probably didn’t do much for the fact that she was bug-nut crazy, but it kept her from exposing her craziness to everyone around.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Juliet said. “That’s why Witch’s

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Ross liked the place, too. Our refuge from the world, he said.”

“Sometimes getting away from the world is a great idea.”

“You bet it is!” Baird called. He had both hands pressed so hard against his wounded thigh that the back of the upper hand was almost white. “Startin’

to be sorry I ever left my place.”

“You,” Dean said, “have been a lifesaver. In more ways than you’ll ever know.”

He and Juliet had cleared the top of the coffi n, which was in remarkably pristine shape for such an old box.
Protected by her magic
, Dean thought. He could hardly remember being so anxious for something to be over.

“Okay,” he said to Juliet. He drew Dad’s journal from a coat pocket. “I’m going to be reading her a bedtime story—a counterspell that should negate her spell once and for all.” With his other hand he drew out a metal flask, a box of matches, and the bag of salt. “You need to open that box, then pour this salt on her bones. Then dump this flask on her—it’s gasoline. Light a match, toss it on, and stand back, because even though there’s not a lot here, it’s going to go up fast.”

He’d been intending for Baird to do that part, but the old man was out of the picture now as far as any demanding physical activity went.

“Got it,” she said. “Open, salt, gas, match.”

“I already know you’ve got a little human torch in you,” he added with a grin.

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“Maybe just a tad.”

He located the counterspell and started to read out loud. “‘Witch’s spell, so long since cast, I’m here to tell, your time is past.’” He caught Juliet’s eye.
Go,
he mouthed.

Juliet squinted, bit down on her lower lip, and grabbed the coffin’s lid in both hands, reaching awkwardly into the hole they had dug. She pulled, but it wouldn’t give.

“‘Witch’s spell, that’s ruled the night,’” Dean continued, “‘hear my knell, which brings the light.’” Juliet gave a mighty yank, and the coffi n swung open.

She screamed, and Dean looked up from the book.

A cloud of smoke and dust, glowing as if from some inward fire, billowed up out of the coffi n.

Damn it
, he thought,
she wasn’t done after all.

And his shotgun was all the way across the grave, on the lap of Harmon Baird, whose eyes had never been so wide in his life.

As the trio watched, the cloud coalesced into a feminine form, seemingly made of luminous sulfuric dust and smoke. She was a crone, an ancient, wiz-ened woman, hunched and twisted with rage and hatred. Her clothing was barely more than rags, and it blew in a cold wind that erupted from beneath, from her grave. The wind buffeted her stringy hair.

It carried a foul ozone smell, like electricity passing through burned fl esh.

The apparition reached taloned hands toward Dean, who kept reading as fast as he could. The wind tried Witch’s

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to tear the pages from his grasp, and he had to hold on with both hands, fighting to keep his feet.

“‘Witch’s spell, of evil unknown,’” he shouted,

“‘cannot repel salt ’pon your bone!’” He nodded to Juliet, who stood back away from the grave.
Afraid to get anywhere near that freakin’

witch
, Dean thought.
I don’t blame her.

But he couldn’t hang onto the book and get the salt.

He wasn’t sure he could even take a step—if he tried, the hurricane-force wind might blow him away.

Come on, Juliet! Salt the bitch!

The icy wind blew into his mouth when he opened it to read again, distorting his cheeks. Fine dust stung his eyes, his skin.

And the witch’s claws were almost on him now.

Would she be able to snatch the book away from him? Kill him with a touch?

The shotgun roared, and the witch let out a scream that almost made Dean’s ear bleed, a scream like a jet engine just inches from his head.

On the other side of the grave, Baird had found his feet and his courage. “You like that, Miz Marbrough?” he asked. “’Cause I got more of it!” The witch whirled away from Dean and rushed at Baird. Her unearthly wind caught his clothes, fl uttering them like laundry on the line in a tornado.

“Juliet!” Dean called. “The salt!” Juliet heard him, awareness snapping into her eyes, and she braved the wind and the miasmic cloud that still issued from the grave. She dumped the bag of salt. Some of it blew away, but enough fell in.

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The witch shrieked again.

“‘Witch’s spell!’” Dean shouted. The wind tore at his clothes, his hair, trying to drive him away from the grave. Other

people might have fallen, but he locked his knees, kept his feet planted and leaned into it. He wasn’t going to let the witch win, because he was a Winchester, and the Winchesters were made to fight battles like this. “The gas, Juliet! ‘So late interned!’”

Juliet turned the flask over. Wind whipped some of the liquid up instead of letting it fall, but more pushed through, into the coffi n.

The witch had reached Harmon Baird and batted away the shotgun like it was a twig. Baird’s eyes were windows showing the mortal terror in his soul, but he swiped at her with his hands, trying to hold her off. At least, that was what Dean thought at fi rst.

Then, as he spoke the last lines of the counterspell, he realized the truth—Baird was holding onto the witch, preventing her from attacking him or Juliet directly. He wasn’t flailing at her. His hands jerked and spasmed because she did, writhing with the pain of the salt on her skeleton.

Juliet struck a match, and the wind blew it out.

Hands shaking, she opened the box again. Matches spewed from it. She caught one.

“‘Now all’s well; your bones be burned!’” Dean screamed against the pounding gusts.

As he spoke the spell’s final words, Juliet dropped the match.

Nothing happened.

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Dean almost had time to formulate a curse in his mind, but before it had fully formed, the cold grave wind turned hot, flame blasting from below as if the wind had turned into propane. The fl ame enveloped Elizabeth Claire Marbrough, or her disembodied spirit, and she screamed once more, in mortal agony.

Juliet fell on her butt in the snow, singed but alive.

Baird had already fallen. His hands were still hooked into claws, his eyes staring at the sky. Trails of blood ran from his mouth, nose, and ears.

“Harmon,” Juliet said. “Is he—”

“He shouldn’t have touched her,” Dean said, taking her hand and helping her to her feet. “It was too much for him.”

“But he stopped her—”

“That’s right.” Dean couldn’t feel guilt—the old man had known he might not survive this adventure, but he’d wanted to stop what he called the forty-year at any price. Still, not feeling guilt brought some guilt of its own. “If he hadn’t hung onto her, she might have reached me or you. Either of which would have stopped us cold. She’d still be here—and out of her grave, which looks like it was magically sealed against her escape. And her forces would still be overrunning Cedar Wells, and you and I . . . well, we’d be where Harmon is.”

Tears trickled down her cheeks as she regarded the dead man. Blood had already stopped pulsing from the arrow wound in his leg. The skin of his face and hands was red and chafed, as if he’d been caught in a blizzard.

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“I don’t . . . really know what to say, Dean. I mean

. . . thank you sounds so lame. So insuffi cient.”

“Thank him,” Dean said. “This is what I do. He’s the one who volunteered.”

The flames inside the grave had died to a steady crackle. Black smoke rose from the box, where the day’s gentle breeze—a natural breeze—caught and dispersed it. Dean reached in with the shovel and flipped the coffin shut, then started tossing dirt down onto it. “Help me bury her again?” he asked. “I need to get back out to the road. My brother’ll have no idea where the hell we are.”

“Our position was being overrun,” Jim Beckett explained. “Some of those with guns had us pinned down from the woods, but then more of them came at us from the flanks, with arrows and spears and swords and clubs and what have you. We were shooting so fast we could hardly touch our guns to reload, they were so hot. I thought we were done for.”

“And then they vanished?” Sam asked. He knew the answer before he spoke.

He and Dean were sitting at a corner table in the Wagon Wheel Café with Beckett and Juliet Monroe.

The Winchester brothers would hit the road in the morning—there seemed to be something strange going on in the Northwest, and they wanted to check it out—but the lawman wanted to buy them a meal before they left. Juliet had taken a room at the motel since she didn’t want to spend the night in her house, so Dean had invited her along.

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The restaurant was almost empty. It seemed most people in Cedar Wells were sticking pretty close to home, even though the threat had passed.