Full Wolf Moon (30 page)
Doris struggled to moisten her mouth enough to whisper, "How can you tell?"
"An educated guess. If the beast were still dominant in me, I don't think I'd have made it back yet. Especially wounded."
He fell quiet once more and it was several moments before Doris dared whisper again. "What now?"
"We try another guess. What particular place will the beast favor for this kill?"
Doris didn't answer. She knew David was thinking out loud more than talking with her. She fidgeted, as afraid now of standing still as she was of walking, and tried not to jerk her head toward every pop or crackle coming from the woods.
"In a clearer area," David said suddenly, making Doris startle even though his voice was still low. "It will want the remains discovered in a short amount of time. Like it did with the minister. His body was found quickly, exposed, not far from the first kill's shallow grave. You see how it plots?"
The thought of going near that place, of touching the earth that received Arthur's torment filled Doris with a nauseating dread.
"Do we have to?" she asked, her voice cracking. "God, do we have to go there?"
David remained still, as if listening to the forest instead of her. But he said at last, "Yes, I think so. We should at least have a look."
"David..."
The healer turned to Doris now, apparently alerted by the ache in her voice. "What's wrong?"
She was being foolish. She was being selfish. Perhaps their last chance to kill the goddamned thing was in that clearing and she was as good as begging David not to take her there. She steadied herself, hid behind her old friend, gruffness.
"Nothing. Let's go."
/ / / /
Doris heard herself whimper rather than felt it as she breached the ridiculous ropes and warning signs posted by the F.B.I. She was only vaguely aware of David harshly whispering for caution, felt him tugging at her sleeve like a memory, years and years old. Ten minutes ago she had practically pleaded with David not to take her there. Now she couldn't be kept away.
The place where the police had exhumed Tsuko Ataki's remains lay almost dead center, a depression in the ground. The elements were already blunting off the small, clotted mounds that encircled the grave. By the next moon, it would be hard to believe the dead had ever been there.
It was not so easy to tell where Arthur had lain. The beast hadn't bothered to hide its brutality to him, leaving Arthur exposed, broken and spent. Doris's eyes strained in the warped colors of night for some sign, any sign of Arthur's touch.
But it was all this little patch of earth could do to offer up a tuft of scraggly grass here and there. Its brownish cast was gray under the moon. In the span of one month, not a single handprint was left. Not even a precious stain of blood.
The realization that she had hoped all along to find the place, to touch the place Arthur drew his last breath weakened her, buckled her, pressed her down onto the earth. She curled her forehead against her knees, squeezed her fists against her neck and let the sobs shake her until she fell over like a ripened pod.
David came to gently pull her upright. She unwound and let him cradle her in his arms.
"I loved Arthur Satsugai," she said into David's shirtfront. "I loved him. But I was afraid. There were so many reasons we would fail ... I had to guarantee we would. He died without ever knowing. I never told him. He loved me and I was afraid and I never told him I loved him, too. I turned him into an adversary."
"You can tell him that," David whispered. "You can tell him at night, in your prayers. You can tell him when the time comes to cross over and meet him."
"Oh God. Oh God. You really believe that?" Doris asked, overwhelmed with a strange, blissful hope at hearing his words; a sensation so alien to her that her first thought was to defend against it. But this time she would choose to feel, choose to trust.
"I come from a different tradition," David replied. "The Navajo view isn't quite so... so ethereal as yours, when it comes to an afterlife. But, I believe in it a lot more than I used to."
Emptied so, Doris would have liked nothing more than to let David keep holding her, keep teaching her how to grieve. But this emptying out let her remember, too, where they were. She started to struggle upward, but David said, "Ssh. While you're in this state, tell me if you feel we're in the right place."
Doris lay quietly a few seconds more, then pulled herself into a sitting position to blot dry her face with her hands. "No," she said, and was certain for the first time in her life of her gut instinct.
"I missed. I missed!" David said, for the first time in an hour raising his voice. He managed to calm himself a little as he stood up, then helped Doris do the same.
"This will be the first place the search parties come," he continued, "yielding two of the three kills as it has. The beast knows. It wants the Army -it probably wanted us- to come here immediately. There'll be another place."
Doris sickened. "God, how can we possibly find it..."
"I've been through this whole area, that's not the problem. The problem is guessing right on two or three possibilities. We're running out of time...but so is the beast."
David walked away, thinking out loud again. "Nearby, but not so near these other kills that the fresh one will be found prematurely. It needs time enough to slaughter and a guarantee that the remains will fuel more terror." He stopped his pacing and looked at Doris. "And it wants you. Its Chosen."
A split second before he continued, Doris realized his point. "If it sees you," he said, "it'll take the opportunity to attack."
"You want me to be a decoy."
"Remember it doesn't want to kill you, it wants you to receive. You won't likely die."
"But I'll be bitten."
"We'll try to stop that, too. I won't be farther away than is absolutely necessary."
"And if I am bitten, David. Then what?"
David was quiet a moment. "Then you have the same options as Max."
"I can tell you what my option will be. I won't go through what I've seen Max go through. I won't do what he's done. If I'm bitten...you understand... if I'm bitten..."
"I understand."
"Then I'll do it."
David cupped Doris's hands in his and squeezed a moment before standing a part, quieting himself. In the pale, tree-filtered moonlight, she heard him whisper, "Where will you go, brother? Where will you feed tonight?"
His eyes lit suddenly. "I think I know."
/ / / /
They trudged from that hill to the next, a tall, worn mound chewed cruelly on its windward face by the elements. There the trek ended at a rocky overhang. It jutted above a scrub-filled area of blunter slope, one hundred feet below it.
"I brought us too high," David said, his voice low and cautious again. He seemed more tense now. "We'll have to climb down. Over there...we'll still be more or less hidden as we descend."
They had to work around the overhang. As Doris struggled along behind David, she looked up briefly to see the panorama of the small valley. What she saw was Tulenar in chaos. It was ablaze in light and she could see the disembodied beams of electric hand torches and Army Jeeps. Telltales of people swarming the perimeter. The beast had struck.
David had already braced where the sloped clearing met the hill, and it was a moment before Doris realized he was demanding her attention by tossing pebbles at her. He waved her down, split between watching her descend and keeping a lookout for the beast. Once down, David whispered, "You've seen what's happening in Tulenar. We're out of time now. I just pray we're in the right place."
Doris wiped her hands against her dungarees and followed David, bent low to prevent too much profile against the brilliantly lit night. They were headed downward, a definite disadvantage, but the only cover to be found was at the lower border of the scrubby patch, where a few large bushes clung against the hillside. Panting, they huddled together behind one fat bush, gnarled and thorny, and Doris immediately began readying her bow.
She whispered, "What makes you think it'll come here?"
"It's the only place so exposed to Tulenar, yet not too far from the other site. By morning, a body lying against this slope can be seen through binoculars anywhere in the camp."
He looked at her. "We need to make sure the beast sees you as soon as it comes into view. It may abandon whoever it's taken to attack you instead. It knows this is its last moon with Max. Its priority will be to prepare you for receiving. The last feed is expendable, if it must choose. And we'll make it choose."
"What about the victim? Even if we can save --"
"I know. We can't think of that now. Let's get past the beast first. How are you doing?"
Doris swallowed and took a deep breath to control her panting. She nodded. "I'm all right. You?"
David smiled. "Terrified."
Doris was surprised that she could smile back. "How are we going to do this?"
"We can't just stick you out in the middle like a sacrificial goat. The beast is a thinking being, it's not stupid. We have to let it believe it's surprised you while stalking it." David swiped at his brow. "We're sweating badly. That's not good."
He tugged open the large leather pouch bound against his belt, the one with the powdery mix of dung and sage. He opened his shirt, dipped his hand in the pouch and began dusting his face and chest, letting the dregs scatter over his clothing as well.
"You, too," he said. "We don't want the beast to discover you before we're ready."
The pouch was on her side, so Doris helped herself, rubbing the pungent mix onto her face like grainy powder, sprinkling it down the back of her neck and between her shirt and chest while David whispered the plan. He nodded toward his right.
"Behind that bush, where the wind's built up a nice blind of debris. We'll put you there. The beast will drop its prey and step back. It wants to give its victim a chance to recover from the drag before it begins the torment. Take aim then. If it's close enough, go ahead and try for the kill. If it's not, shoot anyway. That will make it come for you."
"It's bound to know I'm not alone, David." Doris wiped her dirty palms against her thighs.
"You're right. But remember that it's feeling the press of time, just like we are. Greed and need. We have its base desires on our side."
Doris nodded and looked at her palms, a reflexive check to ensure they were clean. She did a double take. She stared carefully at her right palm. The pentagram was there. But before she could say anything, before she could ask David to look as well -because there was something different there, something changed- a howl, clear and loud and long, stabbed her ears.
David gave her a push and she was running to the selected blind, her heart rolling like a boulder inside her chest. At first, the infusion of adrenaline was dizzying, but in an instant it became such a bonding force in her blood that her senses crystallized, becoming acute to the point of pain. She did not want to be so conscious, so aware of even the feel of the hair on her scalp, of even the smell of the beast as it crested the sloping scrub field, just below the overhang.
It was favoring its left leg. That must have been where David's bullet struck. And it had a curious, white clad bundle clamped in its jaws that confounded Doris at first. A moment passed while she knelt, tense and ready, before she made out the hands and feet of a child dangling, limp as a broken toy.
The white sleeves of the child's nightie almost hurt Doris's eyes, and it was obvious that the rest of the little gown had been white, too, not so very long ago, instead of black with blood in the moonlight. The blood was so fresh, it pasted cloth to flesh.
The beast, its fur shimmering under the moon, limped into the clearing. It sat, panting around the bundle in its jaws, which stirred a little, offered a thin mewling. The beast swiveled its head, giving Doris full view, and she had to mash her hand against her lips to keep from moaning.
God, dear God! It was Joy! It was Harriet and Jesse's daughter.
Doris tasted the blood of her bruised lips. The muscles of her arms galvanized and she was on her feet, letting loose the arrow before she could think. It struck true, burying into the beast's left haunch.
The beast howled like the damned, dropping little Joy with a thud, thrashing in its agony, struggling to grasp the arrow's hilt between its jaws. David was suddenly in view and the report of his gun rang off Doris's shoulder. But the bullets struck just below the writhing beast and just beyond, telltale puffs of dust and debris marking each miss. The beast looked up wildly, gnashing, its bellows wet with froth. But it managed to its feet with stunning speed, regardless of its anguish, its left hind leg dangling as it made for David.
Doris already had her bow readied and she screamed as she loosed the next arrow. It soared over the beast's head. The beast stopped abruptly and turned its brilliant, human eyes on her. David was moving away from his hiding place, angling the beast into a cross fire between him and Doris. The beast looked David's way only a moment before it curled its black lips away from the fangs and took two threatening steps toward Doris.
"No, over here!" David shouted and fired the gun, but he missed horribly. "Maxwell! Maxwell! Over here!"
/ / / /
His name was being called. Was he dreaming? Was it David? Max's vision was watery and tunneled as images faded into view, wavering as though he saw them through a thick liquid. He felt himself pushing through a denseness, a deep grave, but the pain in his leg, God it was endless. It was keeping him down. Wasn't it? Wasn't that his pain?
"An educated guess. If the beast were still dominant in me, I don't think I'd have made it back yet. Especially wounded."
He fell quiet once more and it was several moments before Doris dared whisper again. "What now?"
"We try another guess. What particular place will the beast favor for this kill?"
Doris didn't answer. She knew David was thinking out loud more than talking with her. She fidgeted, as afraid now of standing still as she was of walking, and tried not to jerk her head toward every pop or crackle coming from the woods.
"In a clearer area," David said suddenly, making Doris startle even though his voice was still low. "It will want the remains discovered in a short amount of time. Like it did with the minister. His body was found quickly, exposed, not far from the first kill's shallow grave. You see how it plots?"
The thought of going near that place, of touching the earth that received Arthur's torment filled Doris with a nauseating dread.
"Do we have to?" she asked, her voice cracking. "God, do we have to go there?"
David remained still, as if listening to the forest instead of her. But he said at last, "Yes, I think so. We should at least have a look."
"David..."
The healer turned to Doris now, apparently alerted by the ache in her voice. "What's wrong?"
She was being foolish. She was being selfish. Perhaps their last chance to kill the goddamned thing was in that clearing and she was as good as begging David not to take her there. She steadied herself, hid behind her old friend, gruffness.
"Nothing. Let's go."
/ / / /
Doris heard herself whimper rather than felt it as she breached the ridiculous ropes and warning signs posted by the F.B.I. She was only vaguely aware of David harshly whispering for caution, felt him tugging at her sleeve like a memory, years and years old. Ten minutes ago she had practically pleaded with David not to take her there. Now she couldn't be kept away.
The place where the police had exhumed Tsuko Ataki's remains lay almost dead center, a depression in the ground. The elements were already blunting off the small, clotted mounds that encircled the grave. By the next moon, it would be hard to believe the dead had ever been there.
It was not so easy to tell where Arthur had lain. The beast hadn't bothered to hide its brutality to him, leaving Arthur exposed, broken and spent. Doris's eyes strained in the warped colors of night for some sign, any sign of Arthur's touch.
But it was all this little patch of earth could do to offer up a tuft of scraggly grass here and there. Its brownish cast was gray under the moon. In the span of one month, not a single handprint was left. Not even a precious stain of blood.
The realization that she had hoped all along to find the place, to touch the place Arthur drew his last breath weakened her, buckled her, pressed her down onto the earth. She curled her forehead against her knees, squeezed her fists against her neck and let the sobs shake her until she fell over like a ripened pod.
David came to gently pull her upright. She unwound and let him cradle her in his arms.
"I loved Arthur Satsugai," she said into David's shirtfront. "I loved him. But I was afraid. There were so many reasons we would fail ... I had to guarantee we would. He died without ever knowing. I never told him. He loved me and I was afraid and I never told him I loved him, too. I turned him into an adversary."
"You can tell him that," David whispered. "You can tell him at night, in your prayers. You can tell him when the time comes to cross over and meet him."
"Oh God. Oh God. You really believe that?" Doris asked, overwhelmed with a strange, blissful hope at hearing his words; a sensation so alien to her that her first thought was to defend against it. But this time she would choose to feel, choose to trust.
"I come from a different tradition," David replied. "The Navajo view isn't quite so... so ethereal as yours, when it comes to an afterlife. But, I believe in it a lot more than I used to."
Emptied so, Doris would have liked nothing more than to let David keep holding her, keep teaching her how to grieve. But this emptying out let her remember, too, where they were. She started to struggle upward, but David said, "Ssh. While you're in this state, tell me if you feel we're in the right place."
Doris lay quietly a few seconds more, then pulled herself into a sitting position to blot dry her face with her hands. "No," she said, and was certain for the first time in her life of her gut instinct.
"I missed. I missed!" David said, for the first time in an hour raising his voice. He managed to calm himself a little as he stood up, then helped Doris do the same.
"This will be the first place the search parties come," he continued, "yielding two of the three kills as it has. The beast knows. It wants the Army -it probably wanted us- to come here immediately. There'll be another place."
Doris sickened. "God, how can we possibly find it..."
"I've been through this whole area, that's not the problem. The problem is guessing right on two or three possibilities. We're running out of time...but so is the beast."
David walked away, thinking out loud again. "Nearby, but not so near these other kills that the fresh one will be found prematurely. It needs time enough to slaughter and a guarantee that the remains will fuel more terror." He stopped his pacing and looked at Doris. "And it wants you. Its Chosen."
A split second before he continued, Doris realized his point. "If it sees you," he said, "it'll take the opportunity to attack."
"You want me to be a decoy."
"Remember it doesn't want to kill you, it wants you to receive. You won't likely die."
"But I'll be bitten."
"We'll try to stop that, too. I won't be farther away than is absolutely necessary."
"And if I am bitten, David. Then what?"
David was quiet a moment. "Then you have the same options as Max."
"I can tell you what my option will be. I won't go through what I've seen Max go through. I won't do what he's done. If I'm bitten...you understand... if I'm bitten..."
"I understand."
"Then I'll do it."
David cupped Doris's hands in his and squeezed a moment before standing a part, quieting himself. In the pale, tree-filtered moonlight, she heard him whisper, "Where will you go, brother? Where will you feed tonight?"
His eyes lit suddenly. "I think I know."
/ / / /
They trudged from that hill to the next, a tall, worn mound chewed cruelly on its windward face by the elements. There the trek ended at a rocky overhang. It jutted above a scrub-filled area of blunter slope, one hundred feet below it.
"I brought us too high," David said, his voice low and cautious again. He seemed more tense now. "We'll have to climb down. Over there...we'll still be more or less hidden as we descend."
They had to work around the overhang. As Doris struggled along behind David, she looked up briefly to see the panorama of the small valley. What she saw was Tulenar in chaos. It was ablaze in light and she could see the disembodied beams of electric hand torches and Army Jeeps. Telltales of people swarming the perimeter. The beast had struck.
David had already braced where the sloped clearing met the hill, and it was a moment before Doris realized he was demanding her attention by tossing pebbles at her. He waved her down, split between watching her descend and keeping a lookout for the beast. Once down, David whispered, "You've seen what's happening in Tulenar. We're out of time now. I just pray we're in the right place."
Doris wiped her hands against her dungarees and followed David, bent low to prevent too much profile against the brilliantly lit night. They were headed downward, a definite disadvantage, but the only cover to be found was at the lower border of the scrubby patch, where a few large bushes clung against the hillside. Panting, they huddled together behind one fat bush, gnarled and thorny, and Doris immediately began readying her bow.
She whispered, "What makes you think it'll come here?"
"It's the only place so exposed to Tulenar, yet not too far from the other site. By morning, a body lying against this slope can be seen through binoculars anywhere in the camp."
He looked at her. "We need to make sure the beast sees you as soon as it comes into view. It may abandon whoever it's taken to attack you instead. It knows this is its last moon with Max. Its priority will be to prepare you for receiving. The last feed is expendable, if it must choose. And we'll make it choose."
"What about the victim? Even if we can save --"
"I know. We can't think of that now. Let's get past the beast first. How are you doing?"
Doris swallowed and took a deep breath to control her panting. She nodded. "I'm all right. You?"
David smiled. "Terrified."
Doris was surprised that she could smile back. "How are we going to do this?"
"We can't just stick you out in the middle like a sacrificial goat. The beast is a thinking being, it's not stupid. We have to let it believe it's surprised you while stalking it." David swiped at his brow. "We're sweating badly. That's not good."
He tugged open the large leather pouch bound against his belt, the one with the powdery mix of dung and sage. He opened his shirt, dipped his hand in the pouch and began dusting his face and chest, letting the dregs scatter over his clothing as well.
"You, too," he said. "We don't want the beast to discover you before we're ready."
The pouch was on her side, so Doris helped herself, rubbing the pungent mix onto her face like grainy powder, sprinkling it down the back of her neck and between her shirt and chest while David whispered the plan. He nodded toward his right.
"Behind that bush, where the wind's built up a nice blind of debris. We'll put you there. The beast will drop its prey and step back. It wants to give its victim a chance to recover from the drag before it begins the torment. Take aim then. If it's close enough, go ahead and try for the kill. If it's not, shoot anyway. That will make it come for you."
"It's bound to know I'm not alone, David." Doris wiped her dirty palms against her thighs.
"You're right. But remember that it's feeling the press of time, just like we are. Greed and need. We have its base desires on our side."
Doris nodded and looked at her palms, a reflexive check to ensure they were clean. She did a double take. She stared carefully at her right palm. The pentagram was there. But before she could say anything, before she could ask David to look as well -because there was something different there, something changed- a howl, clear and loud and long, stabbed her ears.
David gave her a push and she was running to the selected blind, her heart rolling like a boulder inside her chest. At first, the infusion of adrenaline was dizzying, but in an instant it became such a bonding force in her blood that her senses crystallized, becoming acute to the point of pain. She did not want to be so conscious, so aware of even the feel of the hair on her scalp, of even the smell of the beast as it crested the sloping scrub field, just below the overhang.
It was favoring its left leg. That must have been where David's bullet struck. And it had a curious, white clad bundle clamped in its jaws that confounded Doris at first. A moment passed while she knelt, tense and ready, before she made out the hands and feet of a child dangling, limp as a broken toy.
The white sleeves of the child's nightie almost hurt Doris's eyes, and it was obvious that the rest of the little gown had been white, too, not so very long ago, instead of black with blood in the moonlight. The blood was so fresh, it pasted cloth to flesh.
The beast, its fur shimmering under the moon, limped into the clearing. It sat, panting around the bundle in its jaws, which stirred a little, offered a thin mewling. The beast swiveled its head, giving Doris full view, and she had to mash her hand against her lips to keep from moaning.
God, dear God! It was Joy! It was Harriet and Jesse's daughter.
Doris tasted the blood of her bruised lips. The muscles of her arms galvanized and she was on her feet, letting loose the arrow before she could think. It struck true, burying into the beast's left haunch.
The beast howled like the damned, dropping little Joy with a thud, thrashing in its agony, struggling to grasp the arrow's hilt between its jaws. David was suddenly in view and the report of his gun rang off Doris's shoulder. But the bullets struck just below the writhing beast and just beyond, telltale puffs of dust and debris marking each miss. The beast looked up wildly, gnashing, its bellows wet with froth. But it managed to its feet with stunning speed, regardless of its anguish, its left hind leg dangling as it made for David.
Doris already had her bow readied and she screamed as she loosed the next arrow. It soared over the beast's head. The beast stopped abruptly and turned its brilliant, human eyes on her. David was moving away from his hiding place, angling the beast into a cross fire between him and Doris. The beast looked David's way only a moment before it curled its black lips away from the fangs and took two threatening steps toward Doris.
"No, over here!" David shouted and fired the gun, but he missed horribly. "Maxwell! Maxwell! Over here!"
/ / / /
His name was being called. Was he dreaming? Was it David? Max's vision was watery and tunneled as images faded into view, wavering as though he saw them through a thick liquid. He felt himself pushing through a denseness, a deep grave, but the pain in his leg, God it was endless. It was keeping him down. Wasn't it? Wasn't that his pain?
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