Manitou Blood (47 page)

I held up the sacred bone of Dachilin. “By all the power invested me by a free America, in the name of common humanity, in the memory of Singing Rock, in the name of Changing Woman and the spirit of forgiveness, get the hell out of here.”

I saw things then that still give me nightmares. As the fluid figure of Misquamacus grew larger and larger, I saw a living kaleidoscope of suffering and cruelty. I saw demons and gods. I saw crows gathering, to turn the sky black, and herds of buffalo falling like landslides. I saw history, like a huge river of screaming people, carrying us all away.

I swept the sacred bone from side to side, and advanced on these visions as if I were going into battle. As I did so, I heard a hollow sucking sound, as if all the oxygen was being dragged out of the air. There was a split second of intense compression, and then there was a massive thunderclap. I was thrown backward across the pond and up against the concrete dam, jarring my shoulder. Stunned, I looked up. Misquamacus had gone, and the air had rushed in to fill the vacuum that he had left behind.

Awkwardly, I stood up, and limped out of the pond and up the slope. Jenica was sitting on the grass with her head bowed, still holding the bloody knife with which she had cut her father's throat. I stood beside her for a while and then she looked up at me with tear-blotted eyes.

“You're hurt,” she said. “You're bleeding.”

The sun had risen high above the trees now, and the last scattered remains of the
strigoi
were smoldering into dead-white ashes. The birds began to twitter again, and I saw cows moving in a distant field.

I helped Jenica onto her feet and then the two of us
walked up toward the inn, saying nothing. As I climbed the steps, I stopped, and turned around, and looked up at the sky.

Jenica said, “What is it?”

“I don't know,” I told her. “I think I was trying to see God.”