Manitou Blood (38 page)

“Changing Woman, speak to me. I need your life, and your strength, and your wisdom. I need you to bring me the power of the sun, so that darkness is banished from our city. I need you to bring me your son Monster Slayer, and your son's sons, and your son's daughters, too.”

God, I felt like sneezing. I wrinkled and distorted my face, but the itch in my nose grew stronger and stronger, until I felt that I had to pull my hand away from Gil's, or I was going to let out a blast that would hit Bertie right in the face.

But then I saw a shudder in the air, right behind Amelia's chair, and the urge to sneeze was completely dispelled. It looked as if the air was actually
wrinkling
, like the heat from a metal rooftop on a very hot day. Right in front of my eyes, an old woman appeared, transparent at first, but then more and more visible. She was tiny, and hunched, with
braided white hair and a face so desiccated that she looked like a monkey, rather than a human. She was wearing a pale gray woolen cloak, and in one hand she was holding a thin stick, which was shiny turquoise blue.

Amelia kept her eyes closed, and continued to call on the spirits to help her. I didn't know if I should say something like “look behind you!” but I was pretty sure that she must be aware that Changing Woman had actually appeared. I had learned from previous experience not to break the spell in the middle of a séance. It could ruin everything, and it could be dangerous, too.

“Changing Woman, I need your courage. Changing Woman, I need your warmth. Changing Woman, I need your benevolence.”

Now the air behind Bertie's chair began to shimmer, too. Within a few seconds, another woman had appeared, a handsome woman in her mid-forties or thereabouts. She was wearing a headdress of brown leaves, and a coarse brown blanket, and her cheeks were marked with red paint. She was standing right opposite me, staring at me over the top of Bertie's head, and her eyes were dead black, as if the inside of her skull was empty.

Gil had opened his eyes, and he gripped my hand tighter to indicate that he had seen these two women, too.

“
Don't say anything
,” I murmured.

At that moment, however, he gripped my hand again, and jerked his head upward.

“
Behind you,
” he said, without moving his lips.

“
What?
” I mouthed.

He jerked his head again, and I suddenly realized that another spirit must have manifested itself right behind me. I very slowly turned my head, and out of the corner of my eye I saw a young woman, dressed in fluorescent white, with maroon zig-zag patterns on her clothes. I couldn't turn around far enough to see her face, but if Gil's expression
was anything to go by, it was just as hair-raising as the woman who was standing behind Bertie.

“Changing Woman, hear me. Come to me, from all the four corners of the world. From the east, where the sun rises and everything is born. From the south, where everything grows and ripens. From the west, where the sun sinks in fullness and satisfaction. From the north, where everything dies.”

Now, behind Gil's chair, there was another tremble of disturbed air. It flowed for a moment like clear water running over rocks, and then it gradually took on the shape of a young woman, completely naked except for red-and-white beads around her wrists and ankles, and for complicated patterns of terracotta paint on her skin. Her silvery-black hair flowed over her shoulders and halfway down her back.

Gil was sitting on the north side of the table, and when this young woman appeared, I knew that Amelia had succeeded in calling up Changing Woman. Hadn't Singing Rock told me that Changing Woman always walks in the opposite direction? From the north, which usually symbolizes coldness and death, the loveliest of young women had appeared, bringing the hope of fertility, and new life.

Amelia slowly opened her eyes. “You're here,” she said, and she couldn't stop herself from smiling.

“
You called me
,” said four voices at once. There was so much psychic charge in the room that it crackled with static electricity. When Changing Woman spoke, blue sparks crept around the edge of the dining table, and all of our hair stood up on end. A caterpillar of electricity even crawled around Gil's dog tags, and up the silver chain that hung around his neck.

“We need your help, Changing Woman,” said Amelia. “Misquamacus the wonder-worker has returned, in the cloak of a borrowed spirit. He has raised a tribe of undead
people from a far-off place beyond the eastern ocean. They have already slaughtered many thousands, and their evil will spread all across the country unless we can destroy them.”

“
I know of this thing
,” said Changing Woman. I could hardly tolerate the sound of her voice, because it made my teeth buzz and my skin feel as if fire ants were crawling all over me.

“Then will you help us?” asked Amelia. “We need monster slayers, who can discover where these undead people are hiding, and can burn them with the sunlight that shines from their eyes.”

“
You are speaking of my son's clan
.”

“We don't know anybody else who has the power to help us.”

The four women slowly walked around the table, until the young woman was standing behind me, and the old woman was facing me, from behind Bertie's back. Gil was staring at me apprehensively but there was nothing I could do to reassure him, except shrug.

“
You know what Misquamacus intends to do?
”

“Yes,” said Amelia. “He wants to rid this country of all but Native Americans.”

“
Can you think of any reason why I should stand in his way? Tens of thousands of my people died at the hands of the white man, or because of his greed, and strangers of many different beliefs now walk across the sacred places where our hogans once stood
.”

“I know that our people did you some terrible wrongs,” said Amelia. “All I can do is appeal to your humanity.”

The four women changed positions again. As they did so, I glanced quickly at each of them, trying to judge from their expressions whether Changing Woman was going to help us or not. But each one of them was impassive, and unreadable, especially the old woman, whose wizened face was barely human at all.

“
I am the daughter of Sa'ah Naaghaii and Bik'eh H-zh-
,” said Changing Woman. “
Sa'ah Naaghaii is the way that all living things achieve immortality through reproduction. Bik'eh H-zh- is the peace and harmony which is essential to the perpetuation of life.

“
Because I am the daughter of Sa'ah Naaghaii and Bik'eh H-zh-, I will help you to be rid of the undead tribe
.”

I had never heard words that bucked up my spirits so much, so to speak. Amelia smiled, and said, “Thank you, Changing Woman, and bless you,” and even Bertie couldn't stop grinning. Gil said, “Now we can kick some ass.”

The atmosphere in the dining room was now so charged up with static that sparks were jumping between the chairs, and the glass triangles that hung from the chandelier were tinkling and clinking like wind chimes. The young girl walked around the table to the place where the young woman in the shining white cloak was standing. They stood side by side for a moment and then somehow the two of them
overlapped
, and melted together, so that only the young girl was left. She walked around the table again, and this time she melted into the middle-aged woman.

“
It is the law of nature that
e
verything must grow old and die
,” said the old woman and the young girl, speaking in unison. “
Everything must be reborn. There is no place in this world for those who are dead but not dead
.”

With that, the young girl melted into the old woman, so that she was left standing alone, naked, incredibly beautiful, her hair rising from her shoulders as if it were being blown by an unfelt wind.

“
I call on my son, and my son's children. I call on the clan of the People-With-Sun-Behind-Their-Eyes. I call on them to seek out the undead tribe, and annihilate them all
.”

She started to chant, a high-pitched repetitive incantation that went on and on for nearly five minutes. As she did so, she began to fade, the same way that Singing Rock
faded, until all I could see were the faint dancing filaments of her wind-blown hair.

Gil let go of my hand and stood up. Amelia immediately shouted, “
No, Gil! Not yet!
”

There was a crack like a giant tree breaking in half, and then a flash of light that almost blinded me. The chandelier exploded, showering us all in glass, and then the glass-topped table shattered, too. Paintings dropped from the walls, and Bertie's spindly sculpture was sent flying across the living room. One after the other, all the windows in the apartment were blown in, and the noise was so deafening that we couldn't hear each other shout.

Underneath all of this cracking and splintering, I heard another noise. It was so deep and vibrant that I
felt
it, rather than heard it. It was like a huge electrical generator; or a thousand voices humming
basso profundo
.

“What's happening?” said Bertie. “I thought they were going to
help
us.”

“Please, Bertil, just wait.”

He didn't have to wait long. The humming grew louder and louder, and all of the debris in the apartment was drawn toward the middle of the living room—fragments of glass, broken furniture, pieces of sculpture, pebbles and compost from overturned plant pots, magazines, letters and dead flowers.

They rose up, all of these bits and pieces, glittering and tumbling in the air, and behind them I could see a dark figure forming, like a man made out of smoke. He was huge—nearly seven feet tall—and he actually
smelled
like smoke—like grassfires burning on a hot summer day.

He was insubstantial—after all, he was a spirit, rather than a real man—but he was using the debris to define his outline, so that we could see him better.

Out of the turmoil of shattered glass, his head gradually formed. He looked as if he were wearing a headdress made out of buffalo horns, which gave him a very Satanic appearance,
but this magic that had nothing to do with Satan—or with God, for that matter. This was Monster Slayer of the Navajo, whose mother was Changing Woman and whose father was the Sun itself.

“
My mother has asked me to help you
,” he rumbled, and his voice sounded like a fire blazing up a chimney. “
She tells me that you wish me to seek out the tribe of the undead, and burn them
.”

“We honor you, Monster Slayer,” said Amelia.

Monster Slayer raised both hands, and said, “
That which my mother asks of me, I will always do
.”

“Just be careful, sir,” said Gil, with unexpected bravado. “The undead tribe, they're not stupid, and there's hundreds of them, and they can move as quick as a lizard off a hot brick.”

Monster Slayer turned his huge, smoky head, and then abruptly opened his eyes. Out of each eye socket burst a dazzling ray of light, so intense that I had to turn my face away. The twin rays of light hit the wall and with a sharp detonation they burned right through the paint, right through the plasterboard, and into the kitchen. The whole apartment was filled with smoke.

Monster Slayer closed his eyes, and it seemed like everything went suddenly dark, except for the lime-green afterimages swimming in front of me. As my sight gradually came back to me, I saw Monster Slayer take a step away from us, and then another. With each step, all of the debris that he had used to form his material shape made a noise like somebody shoveling gravel.
Choosh, choosh
,
choosh.

Gil, still rubbing his eyes, looked at the hole in the wall. “Jesus,” he said. “This character sure doesn't need any hints on unarmed combat, does he?”

Monster Slayer stepped back, and back, and then the smoke that had made up his body swirled away, and the debris clattered and sifted to the floor.

When he was gone, Amelia raised both arms, and closed
her eyes. “I bless your name, son of Changing Woman,” she said, in a high, sing-song voice. “May the Great Manitou lend you all the trickery you need.”

“Amen to that,” said Gil.

Monster Slayer's appearance had trashed Amelia and Bertie's apartment so comprehensively that we helped them to move to the colonial-style apartment upstairs, whose owners were on vacation on the Turks and Caicos Islands. I was trying to convince myself that Monster Slayer and his clan would succeed in hunting down the
strigoi
, but I still didn't think it was safe for Amelia and Bertie to stay in a place with no glass in the windows.

Before we left, Gil and I went around their temporary new accommodation room by room and smashed every single mirror.

Amelia said, “Nigel's really going to love us, when he sees this.”

“Hey,” I reassured her. “Nigel won't care about his front door, or his mirrors. He'll just be happy that you've managed to survive.”

“Do you want something to eat?” asked Bertie. “Of course we can't give you any hot food, but we have some cans of soup, and some Swedish rye bread.”

“That's all right,” I told him. “We'd better be getting back to Jenica. I don't like leaving her too long on her own.”

Amelia came up to me and held both of my hands. “Another strange adventure,” she said. “Why do these things always happen to us, Harry?”

“We're mystics. It's our job. Who else is going to do it, if we don't?”

“Do you think this will work? Calling up Monster Slayer?”

“I don't know. I hope so. But I still have to find Misquamacus, and fix him.”

“You'll come back to see me, won't you? I don't want you to disappear and never find out what's happened to you.”