Forests of the Heart (60 page)

“So fuck off away with yourself,” the leader managed to get out before he made his final charge and the creature tore him apart.

For a time the Glasduine went away into itself then, its mind going somewhere Donal couldn’t follow. He drifted out of its body, still linked, but no longer housed in the flesh. He floated in the still air, slowly turning in a circle, still the ghost. He would always be a ghost now. There would be no return to how things had been.

Now what? he thought.

He’d managed to turn the Glasduine away from those he loved, from the world he’d imperiled, but what was to stop it from returning? They were deep in the spiritworld, so deep he knew it would take him forever and a day to find his way back, if he even could. But that was him. He was nothing. The Glasduine might be able to return in the blink of an eye. And once there it would—

His mind went still when he saw that the Glasduine had returned from whatever place its attention had drifted to. Its head was cocked, listening. And then Donal heard it, too. The summons. An insistent call that demanded to be heard and answered. Like the Glasduine, he recognized its source. He knew the Glasduine was so powerful that this summoning call had no power over it, but because of who it was that called, it would answer. For its own corrupt reasons.

No, he thought. You can’t—

But he had no more control of the Glasduine now than he had ever had.

As it allowed itself to be drawn to the source of the summoning call, there was only time for Donal to will himself back into the Glasduine’s flesh and ride along in the creature’s body to where it would execute its next act of horror.

Bettina hadn’t actually expected the summoning to work. Unlike her wolf, she didn’t believe that she had any true connection to either the Glasduine or Donal, nor did she consider herself to have the necessary
brujería
the spell would require. But there was so much at stake that she had to make the attempt.

So she sent out her summoning call with a pretense of strength she didn’t feel. Sent it out with power when all she truly held were small parcels of luck. Her
brujería
was a healing magic, augmented by her father’s blood, perhaps, but mostly entwined with her knowledge of a
curandera’s
art. She knew herbs and the use of medicines from what her
abuela
and Loleta Manuel had taught her. She had her relationship with
los santos
and the spirits. She could infuse charms and
milagros
with the push those who accepted them needed to accomplish what they could have done on their own, if they only had the necessary self-confidence to do so.

These weren’t powerful spells. They were only small magics that depended more on paying attention to how the world worked, to recognizing the pattern all things had to one other and helping to make connections between them when those connections were severed, or too tangled to be of practical use. They were a
curandera’s
magic, not a
bruja’s,
and she was sure that they would no more help her summon the Glasduine than they could raise the dead.

But it did respond.

The Glasduine arrived in the canyon like a dervishing wind, with a suddenness and force that knocked her and her wolf off their feet. That wind sent up a cloud of dust and tore apart the remains of the fallen saguaro, spraying its broken ribs about them like bullets. It was only because they were sprawled on the dirt at the time that neither of them was hit by one of the wooden projectiles.

“Sweet Bridget,”
el lobo
said, his voice holding the same shock that Bettina was feeling, “How could we be so naive as to think we could stop such a creature by ourselves?”

Bettina had no words to reply. Through the settling dust, she stared in horror at the towering monstrosity. It seemed to be as much tree as human, a man-shaped fusion of bark and branch and corded roots from which sprouted an untidy snarl of twigs and leaves, feathers and bits of matted fur. But the barklike skin was supple and the Glasduine moved with an easy, panther’s grace. Its face was the wooden mask she remembered from the sculpting studio in Kellygnow, only now the features were mobile, snarling, eyes dark with a cunning rage. The rough tangle of vines and leaves that trailed from its shoulders and made up its hair and beard moved of their own accord, coiling and writhing like a nest of disturbed snakes.

The only movement in the canyon were those vines. Neither Bettina nor her wolf felt able to get up from where they’d been thrown. The sheer weight of the Glasduine’s presence paralyzed them. They could see that they wouldn’t be its first victim. The creature had blood splattered on the bark of its limbs and torso—stark against the green leafing and barklike skin. Fresh blood, from the wet glisten of it.

For a long moment the Glasduine seemed content to simply hold onto its anticipation, devouring Bettina with its dark gaze. When it finally took a step toward her, she scrambled to her feet. Before she could dodge, a long powerful arm reached out to snatch her, fingers with a grip like a vise closing on her shoulder.

“No!” she cried, but the sound came out as the shriek of a hawk.

The Glasduine’s touch woke something inside her—a long frenzied wail that shifted the bones under her skin, an ache rising deep up from the marrow of her soul. It brought her father’s blood bubbling up through her veins and she was wracked with an indescribable pain, as though every muscle she had was spasming, her skin tearing, her bones grinding against each other. Her mother’s rosary dropped from her hand. Feathers burst out over her skin, her face pulled into a sharp, narrower shape, and she was suddenly only a fraction of her normal size, slipping free from the rough fingers that had trapped her.

The Glasduine tightened its grip, but not quickly enough to stop the hawk Bettina had become from rising up, panicked, frantically beating the air with her wings. She might have escaped then, but she was too unfamiliar with this new form, floundering where her father would have easily risen up into the sky. The Glasduine’s other fist whipped around and struck her a glancing blow that sent her tumbling head over heels through the air, down into the dirt. Barely conscious, stunned as much from her own transformation as from the blow, she could only lie there and watch the Glasduine move towards her.

But her wolf was quicker.

He had transformed, too, from a handsome wolf of a man into a true wolf, though unlike Bettina’s change, his was of his own will, practiced and smooth. He darted ahead of the Glasduine and snatched her up with a bite that was firm enough to hold her, but didn’t break the skin. The Glasduine roared as
el lobo
took off, racing down the canyon with his small feathered burden. No fool, he. One look at the creature was all he’d needed to know that they couldn’t possibly stand up to it. Their only hope was to flee.

He ran as only
an felsos
could run, blindingly swift, like wind, like lightning, weaving around boulders and other obstructions when he couldn’t simply clear them with a bound.

But the Glasduine was as quick, perhaps quicker. It kept up easily. Too easily. Glancing back over his shoulder,
el lobo
despaired. That first burst of distance he’d managed to put between them and the Glasduine was steadily being eaten away and the damned thing was almost on his heels.

Ellie wasn’t as quick to recover as Aunt Nancy, but she still managed to get to the top of the rocks where Hunter had collapsed in time to see Bettina and her companion’s transformations, the Glasduine’s attack, the fleeing wolf with the hawk in its mouth, the monster hot on its trail. She put a palm against her temple, pressing hard in a futile attempt to relieve some of the pain that had lodged behind her brow.

“That’s
what we’re supposed to be stopping?” she said to Aunt Nancy, staring at where the Glasduine had disappeared around a bend in the canyon. “Are you completely insane?”

“There’s no one else,” Aunt Nancy said.

“Like hell there isn’t. There must be something stronger than us that can try to deal with it.”

Aunt Nancy gave her one of those discomforting grins that did nothing to put Ellie at her ease.

“You have no idea how strong we are, girl,” she said.

“That’s right,” Ellie told her. “I have no idea about
anything
that’s been going on since I was first stupid enough to show up at Kellygnow.” She took another look at the now-empty canyon. “I guess Bettina and her friend were playing out of their league, too.”

“I think I misjudged their intentions.”

“What? You saw them call up the Glasduine.”

Aunt Nancy nodded. “Except it seems to me that they summoned it for the same reason we’ve been chasing it.”

Well, that was one small comfort, Ellie thought. She’d hated the awful feeling that she’d so misjudged her new friend. Although even if Bettina
was
trying to stop the Glasduine, what was she doing in the company of one of the Gentry? For all the things Ellie didn’t know she was at least sure of this: the hard men weren’t their friends.

“Now come,” Aunt Nancy said. “We have no time to lose.”

“What about Hunter?” Ellie said, turning to where he lay.

He didn’t seem to be physically hurt. He’d saved himself from cracking his head on the rocks by falling forward onto his own arms, but he lay there, immobile and pale.

“We’ll have to come back for him,” Aunt Nancy said.

Ellie couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“You don’t get it, do you?” she said. “If we try going up against that thing we just saw, we’re not coming back at all.”

“Then Hunter will be on his own.”

Ellie shook her head. “No, this is way too far off the map of anything I can deal with.”

“You said you would help.”

“Yeah, but help with what? Killing ourselves?”

Aunt Nancy sucked in a breath between her teeth. Before Ellie knew what she was doing, the older woman grabbed her by the arm and slung her over a bony shoulder. Ellie had to put her arms around Aunt Nancy’s neck to keep from falling back down the slope behind them. Once she had her balance, she tried to slip off Aunt Nancy’s back, but then the body under her changed.

The transformation was as sudden as that of Bettina’s companion, but rather than man to wolf, it was woman to spider. A gibbering panic began to howl in the pit of Ellie’s stomach. The change was impossible enough—never mind how she’d just seen Bettina and her companion shift their shapes—but to add to Ellie’s terror, the spider Aunt Nancy had become stood as tall as a horse. It was as if she had become that enormous shadow Ellie had seen looming behind Aunt Nancy. A fantastically oversized wolf spider, and here she was, clinging to its back.

She started to loosen her grip—she no longer cared how far she fell down the slope behind them—but the spider suddenly launched itself forward, leaping over the rocks and scuttling down the far side with a blinding speed.

“Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod!” Ellie cried.

But she had no choice but to tighten her grip around the spider’s neck, her own torso and legs splayed out along the breadth of its thick-furred back. It was that or fall off and crack her skull. Her skin shrank in on itself, she was so repulsed at the contact, so frightened by the terrible speed as those eight, many-jointed legs carried them down the canyon.

Quiet,
a voice she recognized as Aunt Nancy’s said in her head.
The god you call upon won’t answer you here, but if you call loud enough, something else may. And trust me, girl You wouldn’t like what that might be. Not everyone you meet here is as nice as I am.

Please, let me be dreaming, Ellie prayed. Just let me wake up.

Gather your courage.
It was Aunt Nancy’s voice, ringing in her head again.

Trembling, Ellie could only tighten her grip.

“I’m too scared to be brave,” she mumbled into the thick fur under her face.

It was softer than she might have expected, like a cat’s rather than a boar’s.

Here in
manidò-akì
our medicines are strong,
Aunt Nancy told her.
Trust in it. Trust in yourself. We may not be as strong as that
panàbe,
so we will have to be that much more clever.

“You’ve got a plan?”

I am working on one.

Ellie went back to her prayers.

Hunter regained consciousness just in time to see what he thought was a giant spider scuttling off down the canyon—with Ellie clinging to its back. He rubbed his eyes and looked again. The apparition was gone. Just some leftover weirdness from whatever it was that had knocked him out, he decided.

He didn’t feel as bad as he thought he should after having passed out. The only other time he’d fainted like that was one night when he’d accidentally taken too many prescription painkillers. He remembered standing at the sink one moment, the next he was coming out of some strange dream to a whirligig of faces that spun around above him for a long moment until they’d finally settled into Ria’s features. He’d been so weak he’d barely been able to stand, and when Ria finally got him to his feet, he’d wished she hadn’t, because it only made him feel sicker.

Right now he only had the fading residue of a headache and felt a little weak-kneed. That was about it.

He shifted his position, and turned to look back down the slope where Ellie and Aunt Nancy had been just moments ago. They were gone.

How long had he been unconscious, anyway? And why would they just leave him here? Though maybe they hadn’t. Maybe something had taken them away.

The image of Ellie riding that giant spider popped into his head again.

Yeah, right.

He made his way back down the slope and looked around, softly calling their names. There didn’t seem to be any sign of a struggle, but he wasn’t exactly Daniel Boone. Give him a trashed apartment in the city and he could figure out that something bad happened. Out here, everything just looked the same. There could be a thousand clues staring him in the face and he wouldn’t recognize one of them.