Stoneskin's Revenge (35 page)

'Possum…'possum…'possum…

He let the word sink into his consciousness, tried to turn off as much of his intellect as he could, tried to center on only two things: his desire to become that beast, and his memory of how it had been when once before he had been one.

Nothing happened at first, but Calvin did not panic. He simply slipped deeper into himself, tried not to think of himself as a man on a mission at all, but as a 'possum wanting to escape a confinement it certainly would not like. It was scary, because he still had to retain some hold on his humanness—it would do no good to go 'possum and not be able to remember his goal.

'Possum…'possum…'possum…

And then, very slowly, Calvin became aware of the
change.

It did not hurt this time. Rather, it swept over him in a tide of warmth, almost like going to sleep and then reawakening. He was distantly aware of the thrust of his tail returning, of his skin crawling and twitching, of the odd tensions and loosenings of the clothes as he shrank within them. Before he knew it, he was blinking out at the world through the eyes of a middle-sized and decidedly russet 'possum.

In no time at all he had wriggled through two sets of bars and was scampering down the stairs, the scale clutched firmly, if awkwardly, in one paw. A skittering instant later he had reached the archway at the bottom and was navigating the hall beyond. The second door to the right was open, and he found himself peering into the sheriff's office, gratified to see that it was still operating without benefit of electricity, a situation exacerbated by the intermittent clouds that at the moment seemed to have plunged the whole room into an almost-twilight gloom. No one noticed him at first: the loathsome Abner Moncrief was drinking coffee, a secretary was repeating a string of numbers into the phone, and Old Hardface was glaring at them both. Fortunately the outer door had been cracked open for ventilation, which solved a problem he had not anticipated. That was just as well, too, because he could already sense the 'possum getting nervous at the presence of so many people. Fight or flight: his body was awash with both instincts, and he could feel his fur bristling out around him and was finding it almost impossible to resist a desire to hiss.

Calvin was just psyching himself for one final mad scurry when Hardface's eyes fell on him. She started, then proceeded to scrunch her face up into a remarkable scowl—all this in the matter of a second—and then she leapt to her feet and hollered. Abner reached for his gun but went fumble-fingered, and Calvin fought down 'possum reflexes just long enough to make a break for it—exactly as the woman chucked a copy of the Atlanta Yellow Pages at him.

Calvin dodged and scrambled for the door—which was also straight toward the woman. She sort of simultaneously sidestepped, stamped, and kicked at him, and he could not resist the temptation to give her a fast nip on the ankle.

“Get it! Get it! Get it!” Abner was yelling.

But the
last
thing Calvin heard as he dashed into the mid-morning light of a white-columned veranda was a high-pitched voice screaming,
“Rabies!”

Calvin ducked under one of the low azaleas that marked the entrance to the jail's walk on that side, wishing vainly that he didn't have to maintain constant vigil against 'possum instincts.

He had gotten no further than determining which way east was when a Whidden Police car drove up practically beside him—Liza-Bet's Robert was at the wheel—and as it sat idling, none other than Liza-Bet herself trotted out of the courthouse and climbed in. There was another policeman with her, and she was moving rather shakily. Calvin strained his ears, but caught only one line: “…says it's okay for us to take her on back home…”

Home,
Calvin realized dully, was probably where Spearfinger was.

Which meant he had to hurry double—which he could not do in this form.

But he had to go somewhere else to shift back to human; no way he could do that here. A naked Indian boy appearing out of nowhere in the jailyard was not exactly a spectacle to be ignored.

Or, he realized suddenly, did he even have to
be
human to transform again? Could he shift directly to another shape? He'd never tried, but his luck was running pretty good, all things considered, so maybe it'd be worth the attempt.

He closed his eyes, fed the scale blood—and wished, very hard, to be an eagle.

To blatantly kill one was taboo, he knew from bitter experience, never mind such minor constraints as game laws. But certain men at certain times could hunt them for religious rites (if they did not get caught). His grandfather was one of these, but had been half blind by then, and so Calvin had accompanied him, and his had been the lucky shot that had provided the eagle-flesh he had later eaten in a secret ceremony.

Eagle…eagle…eagle…
The words became a sort of chant, and Calvin tried to remember the feel of the air beneath his wings.

The
change
came swift and sudden and caught him sufficiently off guard that he almost got entangled in the bush before he could win free.

But before he was truly aware of it, his vision had unclouded and he was looking at the world through the eyes that saw far and clear.

A minute later he was soaring over the marshes and oak woods of the eastern end of the county.

Chapter XXVI: Back and Forth

(east of Whidden, Georgia—near noon)

Don Larry Scott was pretty certain he was going crazy. Somewhere in the last ten minutes his entire perception had shifted until the whole world seemed like a dream. There was the eerie light for one thing: sunbeams lancing through the tumbling clouds making the woods at one turn dim and murky and the next alive with sparkling jewels where raindrops hung from limbs and leaves and flowers and caught the sunlight. But there were scraps of fog too: drifting in and out among the beards of Spanish moss, mixing the sunlit clarity with patches of dimness and haze. And there was the cacophony of tree frogs tuning up to mate after the shower: the Jew's-harp shrieks of the common green species mingling with the quacks of the squirrel type and the staccato bursts of the pinewood variety that sounded like a gaggle of Boy Scouts trying to learn Morse code. And in counterpoint to their tenor chattering, the constant thrumming of the earth took up the bass. Every footfall seemed to feed it, every mad-run step sent that thrum into his bones, and every one seemed to come louder. Once it had stopped, but even that cessation had frightened Don, because it felt so ominous. That had been when the shadow had found him—roughly five minutes ago.

But he was still running, through light and fog, through rain-gleamed leaves and mist-shrouded bushes. Perhaps this was Heaven, a part of him thought, for it was a beautiful morning and sufficiently uncanny to be not of this world. Or maybe it was hell, and he was doomed to run forever from a threat that never arrived, while his legs just got tireder and more numb and the pain in his side twisted deeper and his lungs refused to continue taking in air. Already that body was becoming distant, already Don almost fancied himself a mindless wraith slipping forever through the sparkling woods.

And then the shadow touched him once more: a darkness across his path that he felt before he saw. Again, and again; and now it was staying with him, flanking him as his legs carried him into a good-sized patch of riverside meadow. A brace of quail rose to his left, but he ignored them as the shadow continued on: a cruciform on the ground, swelling ever larger as he ran.

It had overtaken him now, was perhaps twenty yards ahead, and this time he caught the sound of vast wings flapping; and then a raptor shriek.

An eagle was gliding down from the sky in a graceful fan of wings and outspread tail. It landed in the yellow grass barely a dozen yards in front of him, and turned on its ocher talons to regard him through eyes baleful and yellow and strange.

Don stumbled to a halt and stared at it. To his surprise, the eagle blinked: closed its eyes as if it were trying to remember something—and then its shape began to alter. The head rose up, the legs stretched tall, the wings fanned out, and the feathers slowly withdrew as the head and thighs and torso expanded beneath them. Skin peeked through on chest and belly—ruddy skin that grew smoother even as he watched it. It was as tall as he was now, and the beak had sunk back into the face while the eyes were shifting color and the head feathers getting finer by the second.

No, not feathers, hair!

And Don Scott was staring straight into the eyes of Calvin McIntosh.

“Don, my friend,” Calvin panted, when he had spat something bright into his hand, “I have a problem.”

*

Calvin could sense Don's indecision as the boy swallowed and shifted his gaze to the ground. He crossed the few paces between them at a silent lope, then knelt before the lad and laid his hands on his sweat-drenched shoulders, forcing Don to look him in the eye.

“Yeah, it's scary, ain't it? Guess you never met a skin-changer before, have you? But you've gotta trust me—gotta help me. I think I know how to put an end to all this trouble.”

“It won't stop,” the boy gasped, his voice strained and distant. “I can't get away from it.” Abruptly he threw himself into Calvin's arms and was once more sobbing desperately against Calvin's shoulder. “I can't get away. They're dead, and it's after me, and I wish I was dead, but I don't
wanta
be dead, but I can't get away, can't get out…oh God, Calvin, what am I gonna do?”

Calvin could only hold him, feeling the boy's heart thudding against his own. “It's okay,” he whispered. “I'm here to help you, but you've gotta get control of yourself, gotta think clearly for just a minute, okay?”

“Yeah,” Don managed finally, pulling slowly away. “Guess I wasn't as tough as I thought I was,” the boy continued, as he flopped back on his butt and wiped his face with the tail of his T-shirt.

Calvin squatted opposite him, trying to look calm, though his nerves were so alive with urgency he could feel a scream slowly building. But he could not hurry this, not and do what he planned.

“It's what I told you,” Calvin explained quietly. “It's Cherokee magic goin' on. But there's a couple of things I didn't fill you in on before. One's that I did something really stupid a few days and ago and
let
Spearfinger into this World. And the other's that she's after a friend of mine up north, but is evidently hangin' around here until she figures out where he is. I'm onto her, though, and she knows it, but the only way to kill her's with a bow, or, just possibly, a gun. I had a bow—the one you saw—but the cops took it and I didn't have a chance to get it back, so that's what I need you for.”

“What?”

“Have you got a bow, Don? Or do you know anybody's got one I can get hold of? Or a gun? Either'll do.”

“No guns,” Don sighed. “My stepfather got killed by one in a huntin' accident and Mom got rid of all we had. But I
have
got a bow—got it for Christmas. Not a lot of poundage, though. Don't know if it'd do you any good.”

“Your dad didn't have one?”

Don shook his head. “Mom sold 'em when he died. She didn't even want me to have the one I've got, but Grandpa gave it to me.”

“And it's in your house?”

“Yeah, in the closet in my bedroom.”

“You got a key? I'd hate to have to break in again. Got into a little trouble last time, in case you haven't heard.”

Don fumbled in his pocket and dragged out a jingly ring of keys, searched until he located a particularly jagged dull-gold one. “Here.”

Calvin took it and worked it off the loop. “Thanks.” He rose and yanked the boy up with him. “I've gotta go now. Gotta try to get to your house ahead of your mom. I—”

The boy's face clouded, and he started shaking again. “Mom! How…how's she doin'?”

Calvin steadied him with a hand. “I'll be straight with you, Don. She's about half hysterical—and she's worried to death about you.”

“Then I gotta go home
too.”
He blinked suddenly, as if he had only just remembered that. “That's where I was headin', I guess. Except…the drummin' in the ground scared me, made me so I couldn't think, and there was the song again, only I could just sorta halfway hear it, but it made it hard to think too, and—”

“I know,” Calvin inserted softly. “And I think you're right to try to get there now. But I don't think you should go alone. Unfortunately I can't escort you; it's too big a risk to me if I'm caught and there isn't really time if Spearfinger's doing what I think she is. But—” He paused suddenly. “Where're Robyn and Brock? I thought you were with them in town?”

“I was, but the drummin' started, and all I wanted to do was run…”

Calvin scowled thoughtfully. “But they were behind you, right? Brock and Robyn were?”

“Yeah…I
think
.”

“Then that means they can't be too far behind, even if you've been runnin'. I tell you what, then: I
really
have to get to your house before your mother, 'cause she'll surely wanta go to your room, which is where
I
need to go—which means I don't have time to chase Brock and Robyn down right now either. But I
will
try to keep an eye out for 'em, and if I see 'em, I'll send 'em on to get you. But that means
you're
gonna have to stay put. Think you can manage that? It may be real hard on your nerves.”