Dead of Winter (49 page)

Tom’s mouth salivated. His stomach caved inward. He circled Gustave and Father Xavier like a predator sizing up its prey.

“Eat the priest,” chided Gustave. “Eat the lamb’s sweet meat!”

Father Xavier’s flesh suddenly smelled like juice-dripping lamb. His blood, like the sweet aroma of port wine. His bone marrow, like honey.

The priest opened his exoricsim book and waved his cross. “God the Father commands you! God the son commands you! Christ orders you, he who is the eternal word of God, become man!”

Tom growled.

“You’re becoming one of us now,” said Gustave.

Tom squeezed his fists. “No, I won’t give in!”

At the staircase, the railing crashed down as the fire from upstairs reached the landing. Smoke and serpents of flame drifted across the ceiling.

Gustave held out his arms. “We will be brothers in hell, you and I.”

Father Xavier shouted, “Fear take flight, when the holy and terrible name of Jesus is invoked by us!”

Gustave reeled and grabbed his ears. “Shut up, eunuch!”

Tom’s fury unleashed. He loped like a wolf and charged his prey.

218

Outside, the horned beast’s
 
eyes penetrated Anika. Its shredded lips pulled back in a wide grin, exposing racks of icicle fangs. She felt petrified as a claw as long as a knife blade pointed in her direction.

A dozen windigo cries erupted in the storm. Stick-like bodies charged through the fog. Anika turned, gripping her spear and tomahawk. A decrepit old man with pale white eyes loped toward her. She impaled his brittle chest and shoved him into the well. The spear fell with him.

A hairless wolf leaped for her throat. Anika swung her tomahawk, shattering its muzzle. The next attacker was a giant with stilt-like legs that stretched up into the swirling black smoke. She sprinted across the courtyard through the fog. A pack of windigos ran behind her, roaring.

She reached a corner wall. Climbed up the ladder. A snarling child windigo scurried up after her, grabbed her ankle. She kicked its face. It fell down upon a horde of others. She hurried up the ladder, her eyes on the watchtower. She climbed inside the hole in the floor. More beasts were leaping onto the ladder, ascending at an incredible speed.

Anika shut the trapdoor and slid across the metal bar. More windigos ran along the landings on either side of the guardhouse. She closed all the portals, latched the door. Claws scratched at the floorboards and walls. Fists pounded on the roof.

She reached into her medicine bag and pulled out a handful of white shells. Each was carved with a snow owl. She dropped them across the floor. As the windigos wailed all around the watchtower, Anika squeezed a shell in her hand and prayed to Grandmother Spotted Owl.

219

Tom tackled Gustave, knocking him to the floor. The beast within raged as Tom pounded the cannibal’s face. Drove his thumbs into his eyes, pushing them back into his skull, squishing them. Gustave screamed. A force knocked Tom back. He flew ten feet and skidded across the floor.

Gustave leaped to his feet. Blood hemorrhaged from his eye sockets. “Surrender yourself to me, Tom.”

“Never.” He stood, gripping his bruised ribs.

“Let your demon take over.”

Tom’s skeleton felt as if it were turning to ice. His spine lengthened. “No!” Tom pulled the cross-dagger from his belt. It burned his hand, but he didn’t let go. The demon caged within Tom’s bones released a wail of terror.

Gustave stepped forward, blindly. “What are you doing?” His face was streaked with blood, his eye sockets hollow red pits.

Tom squared up to the Dark Shepherd. The beast who had murdered his wife and unborn child. “I am not going with you.”

“Then we will take you by force.” The madman cackled. The ballroom echoed with a chorus of squeaks and cawing. Rats crawled up from the cellar. A swarm of black birds flew into the ballroom. Satan’s scavengers formed into a black twister of fur and feathers. They roared together as one enormous beast, standing as high as the ceiling.

A force knocked Tom back.

Father Xavier charged out of his sacred space, waving his cross. “God of heaven! God of Earth! God of Angels! Creator of all invisible beings!” The exorcist stepped between Tom and the oncoming swarm. “From the ambushes of evil spirit, free us, O Lord!”

The black spiral of claws and talons exploded outward, circling Father Xavier, Tom, and Gustave like a cyclone. Orange-blue flames spread across the ceiling, rolling in waves of scorching hot air.

Trapped within the whirling black funnel, Tom stood back to back with Father Xavier. The priest kept praying, “Our Father, Who art in heaven…”

Rats and ravens hopped off the spinning wall, clinging to Gustave’s rail-thin body, gathering around his head until the only thing visible was his red-streaked face. He spoke in multiple voices. “Your fate is sealed, Tom. Kill the priest and join us or our minions will feast upon you for an eternity.”

The exorcist continued shouting at the swirling black mass. “...May your kingdom come! May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven…”

Gustave pointed to the priest. “Eat the holy Eucharist, and you will be saved!”

Tom’s cravings for meat returned, more ravenous than before. His leg bones stretched until he towered over Father Xavier and Gustave by two feet.

“Eat or be eaten!” the legion commanded.

Tom slowly turned, raised the cross-dagger above Father Xavier’s back.

“…lead us not into temptation! But deliver us from evil! Amen!” The exorcist spun around, aiming his cross. “God have mercy on this man’s soul!”

Tom, growling, turned around and rammed the holy dagger into Gustave’s eye socket. The cannibal demon shrieked. Shafts of white light shot out of his eyes and mouth. Vibrant rays lanced through cracks in his face until Gustave’s head glowed like a fiery sun. The cries of lost souls released from the Dark Shepherd’s throat.

“Tommmmmm…" Beth Hatcher’s voice drifted upward.

Tom backed away, reaching toward the ceiling with a long bony arm. “Beth!”

Her voice faded into the cacophony of a thousand other souls.

White flames engulfed Gustave’s body. The rats and ravens squealed and disintegrated as the holy fire spread through the spinning swarm.

Then the room exploded with blinding white light.

220

Inside the watchtower, Anika heard a loud
boom
like dynamite going off. A force rocked her back against the log walls.

The windigos stopped clawing at the walls and roof. She heard them hopping down to the ground. Their running feet thundered like a stampede of buffalo toward the gate. She peered out a crack in one of the portals. The howling snowstorm seemed to be retreating from the fort. The fog rolled across the snowfield, back into the forest. The pack of windigos sifted between the pines. Among them ran the Ancient One, its antlers snapping the branches. The storm clouds kept retreating over the treetops, until they were a far distance away. Along the horizon appeared the glow of the waking sun. The snow stopped falling. The wind died down. The only sound was a crackling fire.

Anika opened a portal facing the village. A giant blaze consumed Noble House. The roof crashed in.

“Tom!” She climbed down from the ladder. Ran toward the towering bonfire.

Anika’s heart leaped, as Swiftbear and a young brave came running out of a cabin and ran alongside her.

At the second floor of Noble House, Tom burst out of the smoking door with Father Xavier clinging to his shoulder. The two men ran down the steps. When they reached the ground, they collapsed at Anika’s feet. Her heart dropped at the sight of Tom’s gaunt face and elongated body.

221

Lying on a bed of snow. Shivering. So cold. Tom’s body spasmed. He coughed. Opened his eyes. The sky was burning. A tower of flames. Black smoke.

Father Xavier was standing over Tom, praying. Two Indian warriors gathered around the priest with spears aimed at Tom.

“Get back!” the priest yelled.

“He must be killed!” spoke an Indian with silver hair.

“No, don’t hurt him!” Anika stepped between the braves. She jumped to her knees and touched Tom’s face with a furry glove. His eyes welled up at the sight of her.

Part Twenty-One

Phoenix Fire Woman

222

Anika paced on the porch outside her cabin. She clutched the prayer bundle around her neck, praying to her grandmother and the elders of the Mediwiwin.

In the courtyard, Father Xavier argued with Squawking Crow. “Let me see him! He needs my help!”

The young brave kept pushing the priest back, blocking him with a spear.

Swiftbear came out of the cabin and put a hand on Anika’s shoulder. “I have done all I can with my medicine. I’m sorry.”

Anika shook her head. “No!”

“He is lost. He is almost
wiitigo
.”

“Then I will save him.” She walked toward the door.

Swiftbear blocked her. “No. We must burn down the cabin before he wakes up.”

Anika paced, searching her mind for the right medicine. “I will perform the Phoenix Fire ceremony.”

He shook his head. “Too dangerous.”

“Grandmother gave me her medicine bag. I can use her magic.” She pulled out a handful of white shells.

“It takes a seasoned shaman to use owl medicine.” Swiftbear scowled. “If you fail, he will kill you.”

Anika gripped her uncle’s forearm. “Tom is my destiny. If I am to die, then I will die with him.”

“You are as stubborn as your grandmother.” Swiftbear looked toward her cabin door and sighed. “Go to him, Little Pup.”

Anika hugged him and stepped into her cabin. She closed the door and took a deep breath.

Tom lay on her bed, covered in buffalo hides. He tossed and turned. Anika fought back tears when she saw his face had grown even more angular, his pale skin stretched around the skull, all his veins exposed, like blue branches under a sheet of ice. His body was longer, his legs hanging off the bed. He moaned and cringed as if having nightmares.

Anika undressed. With an owl feather, she stirred up smoke from sage burning in a bowl and smudged her nude body. “I call in the spirit of the Phoenix.”

On the bed, Tom’s bones made popping noises. His head shook on the pillow.

Anika put a hand on his bony chest. His skin felt so cold. She pulled out the flute that Tom and Chris Hatcher had whittled together. Her fingers felt the carvings of a white buffalo clashing horns with the antlers of an elk. She played a sacred song. This calmed him.

From her medicine bag, she poured white shells around the bed. Then she chanted an Ojibwa prayer and imagined a bird of fire flying into her chest. Her entire body filled with heat. She placed a flat stone in Tom’s hand and closed his fist. Then she climbed under the buffalo hide and embraced him, warming his naked body with her own.

223

Tom was running through the foggy woods, half man, half animal, searching for something to feed his hunger. His keen sense of smell picked up the scent of pine and snow and, from somewhere, blood. He loped faster between the trees, snapping branches, and came to a clearing. In the center was a snow mound with a red spiral.

The symbol was familiar, but he couldn’t recall where he’d seen it.

“Father!” a boy’s voice called.

The windigo shook his head and suddenly remembered he had once been a man. A father who had lost his son. “Chris!”

The boy was standing in the mist at the edge of the clearing. He appeared transparent against the trees. A ghost. He beckoned Tom. “Come with me.” Chris’ spirit ran into the forest.

“Wait, where are you going?”

“They’re coming for us,” the boy called back. “Hurry!”

Tom followed, wondering who was coming after them. Inside him, man and beast were battling to take over this body. The animal in him wanted to run the opposite direction, continue to hunt for prey. What was left of the man clung to his memories. The good years he had spent married to Beth and raising their son. The family shattered by their untimely deaths. And all the drunken nights that follwed as Tom’s life had gone into a downward spiral.

Chris was leading him to heaven, where they could all be together again.

The boy stopped at the edge of a lake covered in white ice. The mist swirled around an island of jagged rocks and pine trees. In the cliffs were several caves.

Tom stopped. “This doesn’t look like heaven.”

“It’s your new home.” Chris’ ghost evaporated.

Tom shouted, “Son! Wait, come back!”

Howls echoed from the island. And the beast within Tom howled back.

The fog drifted over the frozen lake. Within the mist formed the broad antlers of an enormous beast with fiery white eyes. And Tom somehow knew that this was the Ancient One, he who was older than old. Behind the windigo loped dozens of smaller skeletal creatures. Their bodies were marked with ragged holes and exposed bones as if the pack had been feeding off one another.

Tom started toward them and was stopped by the sound of flute music. It seemed to come from the sky. A flock of snow owls swooped between Tom and the horned windigo. It shrieked at the birds.

Stay with me, Tom
, whispered a woman’s voice.

He felt a sudden warmth against his skin.

Call on your totem.

He opened his fist and saw a white stone etched with a buffalo. And he remembered where he came from. “By the powers of my ancestors, I call on the spirit of white buffalo.” In the woods behind him came the sound of thundering hooves.

The antler-horned windigo stopped in the center of the frozen lake and roared. The other windigos retreated into the fog.

Tom turned and stared into the peaceful eyes of the white buffalo. It snorted and bowed its head. Tom walked up to his spirit guide and put his hand on its forehead. Snowflakes speckled its thick white fur. Tom felt a warmth course through his body as he drew power from the sacred bison. He felt his long bones shrinking, his muscles growing thick. His claws pulled back into his fingers. His cravings for flesh dissipated. His strength returned.