Witch's Canyon (31 page)

“We’ve met,” Sam said. “It might be better if he doesn’t see you talking to me.”

“Why?”

“He can explain. Let’s just leave it at that.” If that didn’t force the issue, then he didn’t know what would.

She didn’t follow up on it. “So you think I should be on the lookout for any bow-and-arrow wielding Indians?”

Sam nodded. “Among other things.”

“What’s in your bag?” she asked. “Is it guns?”

“Heather, listen—”

“You can tell me, Sam. I won’t blab.”
Like you kept your dad’s big secret so well
, he thought. He was glad she hadn’t—although it turned out to be a blind alley, you never knew in this kind of case which information might be invaluable. But that didn’t mean he wanted to trust her with any of his own.

“Heather, I need to keep going. I’m trying to cover a lot of ground here, and there’s not much time.”

“Okay, I won’t keep you, Sam.” She looked a little disappointed. “Maybe I’ll see you later on.” 292 SUPERNATURAL

“Maybe so,” he said, breaking free as fast as he could.

The disappointment wouldn’t kill her.

The witch’s spirit army just might.

He was trying to cut through one of the balconies surrounding the center court, but the crowd had grown so thick it was hard to make any progress without ramming people out of the way with his bag.

A squeal of microphone feedback explained why.

Guess it’s showtime.
He hadn’t even fi nished the upstairs circuit, much less made it out to the parking lot.

Instead of fighting his way through the throng, he dropped back, until the front window of a lingerie shop was at his back. He wanted the wide view so he could see if anyone flickered or fl ashed.

From his angle, he could see only a small section of the lower level. He hoped the sheriff’s offi cers were alert instead of watching the dais.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Carla Krug’s voice rose up from speakers that had been turned up a bit too loud. “Thank you all for coming to the grand opening celebration of the Canyon Regional Mall.” A swell of applause came from the crowd, and Carla quieted to lavish in it. After almost a full minute it subsided enough for her to continue. “I see you, like me, have been waiting anxiously for this day to come. The day we don’t have to drive to Prescott or Flagstaff or Phoenix to see the latest fashions, pick up the new best-seller, catch a movie, or have a nice Witch’s

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dinner in comfortable surroundings. The day that people from across the region can come together in a climate-controlled shopping environment featur-ing the latest in retail technology, the best stores, and the greatest sales

people—your neighbors and

mine—found anywhere!”

Another burst of applause met this statement, although it was not as sustained as the fi rst.

“My name is Carla Krug, and for those of you who don’t know me, I’m the manager of this shopping center. My office is on the second floor, and if you ever have a comment or a compliment, or God forbid, a complaint, you’ll be able to fi nd me there. I want to hear from you. And if I’m not there, it’ll be because I’m out shopping in some of these fabulous stores!”

Eyeing the crowd, Sam spotted Eileen, their waitress from the Wagon Wheel Café, Heather’s dad, Peter Panolli, Mrs. Frankel the librarian, and several other people he’d run across in town. It almost seemed like everyone who was still alive in Cedar Wells had come today. Maybe they thought there was strength in numbers.

There could be, but there could also be unexpected danger.

“I know you want to get busy shopping,” Carla continued. “So do I. And I’ll warn you, there’s a pair of red Manolos in the window at Freddie’s Fashion Footwear that has my name on it, so keep your mitts off those!” After a hush, the crowd laughed, 294 SUPERNATURAL

good-natured and enjoying her banter. Sam hoped they stayed that way. “So I’m going to stop talking and get my credit cards warmed up. We do have a special guest today, so I’ll ask you to offer a great big Canyon Regional Mall welcome to Mayor Donald Milner of Cedar Wells. After his brief remarks, the stores will open and you can shop till you drop!” Another round of applause, another squeal of feedback, and then Sam heard Mayor Milner’s voice. He wondered how the politician would gloss over the murders and the fact that until they were solved, none of the people at the mall would be able to leave town.

“Thank you, Carla,” Milner began. “And thank all of you for braving the elements and joining us here today. The great thing—one of the great things, but there are a lot of them, as you’ll learn—about Canyon Regional Mall is that you can shop in climate controlled comfort no matter what the weather’s like outside. We all know that’s going to come in handy in the months and years to come.” He waited for polite laughter and a smattering of applause to die down. “A lot of people worked really hard for a long time to make this thing happen,” he went on. “I’d like to thank them today. There were plenty of times people thought the project would never get off the ground, but I had faith, and so did Carla and some others, and I’m happy to say that today we can sit back and say, ‘I told you so!’” This brought more laughter and a few hearty whoops. “Cedar Wells is the greatest small town in Witch’s

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Arizona. Maybe in America. And as of today, Cedar Wells has one more claim to greatness—the newest, greatest shopping mall in the country. Just up the road is an American landmark, the Grand Canyon, which we all know and love. Today, ladies and gentlemen, I give you America’s newest landmark—Canyon Regional Mall! Thank you for coming, and enjoy!” The applause swelled again, more sustained this time. So that was how he planned to deal with the issue, Sam recognized. By pretending it didn’t exist.

Dad had been no fan of politicians. At Stanford, Sam had developed a more nuanced view, recognizing that some of them had the public interest at heart, while some had only their own interests.

Mayor Milner seemed to reinforce Dad’s beliefs quite nicely.

After a little more than a minute, the applause died. People started to move away from the balcony’s edge as the shops threw open their doors and invited people inside.

Sam blew out a sigh of relief. He had been most afraid of an attack while almost everyone was con-gregated in one confined area, but it looked like that wouldn’t happen.

Maybe Dean and Harmon Baird had already made it to the witch’s house. Maybe she was salted and burned, the counterspell performed. Neither of them had had mobile phone service at the schoolhouse, so Dean probably wouldn’t be able to call him to let him know.

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Suddenly, the tenor of the crowd changed, the bab-ble of cheerful conversation stopping abruptly.

“What’s that?” someone asked, terror registering in his voice.

Then again
, Sam thought,
maybe Dean’s not there
yet after all.

THIRT Y-FIVE

“What we don’t want to do,” Dean said softly, “is run out of ammo.”

“Makes sense,” Baird said.

“But we may have caught a break. They’re packed in pretty tight around us now. With this scattergun—”

“I gotcha.” Baird waved his own rifl e. “I can back you with this but it ain’t gonna take out bunches of

’em at once.”

“Wouldn’t hurt, though,” Dean said, wishing the old man had a shotgun instead of his antique rifl e and homemade dumdums. “Just be stingy with lead.”

“Son, I can squeeze a nickel so hard Thomas Jef-ferson weeps real tears. You don’t have to tell me to be stingy.”

“Let’s do it, then.” Dean already had a shell chambered and the gun completely loaded. The animals milled around outside the circle, prodding at it now 298 SUPERNATURAL

and then, testing to make sure it remained whole. As he had said, they were packed in tight, for the most part. The difficulty would be that they were on several different levels: rodents and reptiles close to the ground, deer and sheep higher, birds above that.

He had to make his move fast, though. The trampling of the snow around the circle would shift the salt ring even faster than the melting. If he used up eight shells, that would still leave him with sixteen.

Of course, the possibility existed that when they got to the witch’s cabin, this force would seem like a small platoon out of a much bigger army. In which case sixteen shells might not be enough.

Then again, a hundred might not be enough. If he died here, he’d never fi nd out.

“Here we go!” he shouted. He aimed high with the first blast, hoping to take out a good number of the birds. The shotgun roared and the air fi lled with flying feathers and bird parts. As they fell to the ground, the pieces flashed and glowed black. Very few of them actually landed; most blinked out of existence on the way down.

The other creatures reacted with a start—most freezing in place, some scurrying for cover behind larger animals. That was okay with Dean. The more they were bunched together, the more he could take out with a single spray of rock salt. He wished they were farther back, so the salt would have more time to spread, but beggars, they said, couldn’t be choos-ers. He lowered the shotgun’s barrel and shot toward ground level, on the theory that rock salt even hitting Witch’s

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the ankles of the bigger animals might be enough to destroy them.

Rats, mice, ground squirrels, skunks, were obliterated instantly—the skunks leaving behind, oddly, traces of their familiar burnt rubber stink as they vanished.

The larger ones, the coyotes and raccoons and deer and one bighorn sheep caught in the blast, were not destroyed, but crippled, falling to the snowy plain and releasing unheard screams toward the sky. As they writhed and bucked in evident agony, some of them blinked and flashed while others changed form, strobing back and forth between human and animal shape.

One of these was the deer that had the form of Baird’s father.

“Pa!” Baird shouted again. This time he lunged before Dean could catch him toward the spirit that resembled, momentarily, his long-dead father.

Doing so broke the circle.

“Crap!” Dean said. He whirled and fired a blast, mid-level, behind them, to forestall a charge from the rear.

The spirit animals were momentarily confused.

The path to attack was cleared, but so many had died in the three blasts so far that it took them several seconds to decide what to do.

Which—
of course
, Dean thought—was to charge.

He chambered another shell, fi red. Baird had reached his father, who had already changed back into the big buck. The animal tried to gain its foot-300 SUPERNATURAL

ing, and swung its antlers in a ferocious arc toward Baird. Dean dove, plowing into the old man and knocking him clear just in time. The buck brought the antlers back around, and Dean ducked beneath the swipe, feeling the wind whistle past his scalp. He fired from point-blank range into the deer’s muzzle.

Five,
he counted.
Three more to go.

But he and Baird were both on the ground now, exposed, and the remaining spirit creatures had re-grouped. Birds gained elevation to drop down toward them in precipitous dives. Snakes and rats burst from drifted snowbanks at them.

God, I hate rats.
Dean fired a blast at ground level, taking out what seemed like dozens more of the crawling, creeping, and writhing vermin.

He heard a sharp
crack!
and saw Baird, on one knee, firing his old rifle. His slug hit one of the remaining sheep, destroying it. He shot again and eliminated the other deer.

Dean aimed at the largest remaining clutch of animals and fired. Fur flew from raccoons, skunks, squirrels, and the last of the bighorn sheep, and they disappeared.

One of the remaining coyotes rushed at Dean with his mouth open, fangs bared in a soundless snarl.

Dean couldn’t bring the shotgun around fast enough, but there was another report from Baird’s rifl e. Even as Dean braced for the inevitable impact, the beast blinked away, and all that hit Dean was a brief rush of air.

Then it was over. The remaining animals sprinted Witch’s

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or skittered or slithered away. Dean and Harmon Baird both sat back in the snow, catching each other’s eyes and breaking into smiles, then outright laughter.

“I guess we showed them somethin’, eh?” Baird said between fits of hilarity. “You see the way they turned tail and skedaddled?”

“I did,” Dean said, striving to catch his breath. “I did indeed.”

The moment passed. Dean knew they weren’t in the clear—far from it. This had been an advance guard, that was all, meant to kill them or at least delay them before they could reach their goal.

The good part was that an advance guard wouldn’t have been required if there hadn’t been something worth protecting. More than ever, he was convinced, the answer lay at Elizabeth Claire Marbrough’s cabin.

If she had been buried somewhere else—one of those cemeteries he and Sam had visited on their fi rst day in Cedar Wells, for instance—then he and Baird would have been wasting time here.