Witch's Canyon (35 page)

Juliet turned away, plugging her ears.

Dean squeezed the trigger.

The gun roared, flame spitting rock salt into the animal. It reared and bucked once, then vanished.

All that remained was the melted plastic sheeting.

Even the blood disappeared from the floor, the walls, and Juliet’s clothing.

“It’s all gone,” Dean said. “Now, about that floor . . .”

THIRT Y-NINE

The parking lot had become a war zone. Most of the cars in the back row were trashed, their windows and lights blown out, fenders knocked off, tires fl attened, bodies riddled with holes. Spent shell casings littered the ground behind them, where the sheriff’s officers, security guards, and Sam sought shelter.

At the forest’s edge, the scene stayed relatively pristine, because the spirit army’s soldiers just disappeared when they were destroyed, taking with them every sign of their existence.

Three of the defenders were wounded now, and Sam had begun to think that Benally wouldn’t pull through. At a crouch, he skittered over beside Beckett. “We need to get Benally to the paramedics,” he said. “He’s looking bad.”

“I know,” Beckett said. “But they’ve really got us pinned down. If we lift him—”

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“I know,” Sam echoed. “I’ll take the chance, if there’s someone who can help me.”

“I will, sir.” It was the redheaded security guard.

“I’ll take his feet if you take his shoulders. I think we should keep him as flat as we can.”

“Agreed,” Sam said. He turned back to the sheriff.

“You guys be okay without us for a few?”

“Get Benally some help,” Beckett said. “We’ll be just fi ne.”

A bullet tore into the vehicle they were hiding behind, spraying window glass over them, as if to put the lie to Beckett’s words. Sam thought the bullet was more right than Beckett was. The attackers kept coming, more all the time, and had started moving to flank the line of parked cars.

Dean, I hope you’re there
, he thought for about the hundredth time.

“Come on,” he said to the security guard. He crab-walked over to Benally, and she went with him.

“We’re going to get you some medical help, Benally,” he said. Benally blinked a couple of times but didn’t answer. He hadn’t spoken for a while.

Sam squatted behind the officer and shoved his hands beneath him, lifting him by the underarms.

The guard grabbed his ankles. Together, they managed to lift the heavy officer several inches off the ground. Carrying him while hunched low themselves was harder than if they’d been able to stand up, putting enormous strain on their backs. But standing would have meant being shot.

Sam gave a grunt and started walking backward, 334 SUPERNATURAL

still at a crouch to keep his head below the protective wall of vehicles. Even so, a bullet whistled past him, a near miss, fired between two trucks. He almost dropped Benally, then firmed up his grip. “I can go faster,” the security guard said.

“Okay,” Sam said. He was heading backward blindly, not sure how much faster he could go. But he was willing to try.

Benally had the upper torso of a bodybuilder, and Sam realized that he was doing the lion’s share of the hauling. He didn’t object, but he hoped he’d be able to walk upright again once the task was done.

Sam saw that more uniformed security guards had taken up stations at the door to the mall, keeping people from wandering out into the battlefi eld. So rather than carrying the wounded man through the mall, they took him around the corner to the south side, where ambulances waited at the loading docks.

Paramedics rushed to help, relieving them of their burden and setting to work immediately on Benally.

Sam stretched to work the kinks out of his back.

Fully extended, he was far taller than the redheaded guard, who topped out at less than five and a half feet. She popped her back with a loud crack and gave him a bashful grin. “Thanks for helping,” he said.

“No problem,” she replied. She was about to say something else, but then her face took on a serious demeanor as she listened to her earpiece. Although she had been flushed from the exertion, the color drained from her face. “It’s Ms. Krug,” she said.

“She and the mayor are cornered in her offi ce.” Witch’s

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Sam didn’t wait for more details. So far the trouble had largely confined itself to outside the mall, with that one initial exception. He had hoped it would stay that way. Dad always impressed upon his sons the necessity of keeping the things they hunted secret. To do otherwise, to publicize them, would terrify the general public. And it would turn the world’s accepted knowledge on its head, for no useful purpose. It might even strengthen the bad things, some of which fed off people’s beliefs and fears.

If they had gotten inside the mall, while most of the law offi cers and security guards were outside . . .

then it was up to him to deal with them.

He’d left his bag of weapons back at the cars, intending to go straight back after delivering Benally.

He had tucked his sawed-off into a deep inside jacket pocket and had a couple of extra rock salt shells on him, but that was all.

The redheaded guard had less than that, though—

just the Beretta she’d been issued that morning.

Sam took off at a run without waiting for further elaboration. The guards at the exit were focused on keeping

people out, but one saw him coming and opened a door for him. He sprinted through, revers-ing his previous course, and took the stairs three at a time.

People still milled around the mall, although the sounds of happy, expectant shoppers had been replaced by those of virtual prisoners complaining about being locked in. Smoking was forbidden inside the building, but apparently that rule wasn’t 336 SUPERNATURAL

being enforced, and Sam raced through pockets of cigarette smoke. As he did, he heard arguments that threatened to turn into outright brawls. These people had to be let out soon or the bloodshed would be strictly human on human.

At the hallway that led past the restrooms and security office and down to Carla’s, he encountered the first of the spirit attackers, a rawboned woman with the imprint of hands bruising her throat and her head cocked at an unnatural angle. As she turned to face Sam, he saw that her left eye had been poked out, dangling against her cheek by a thread of ocular nerve.

Violent death was never pretty. This unfortunate woman’s, though, had been exceedingly ugly and unpleasant. Her mouth opened, jaw shuddering, as if she wanted to say something to him. Her remaining eye was mournful, but her hands were already clutching at him, eager to reenact her demise.

From behind her, Sam could hear anxious shouts and loud thumps that he guessed came from Carla and Mayor Milner. He hated to waste one of his shells on this single spirit. He knew she was beyond pain, so although part of him flinched away from causing her any more than she’d already suffered, he made a dash past her. She lunged at him as he went by, and he snapped a kick at her knee while she was off balance. She flashed bright black light at him, phased out momentarily, and collapsed on the hallway fl oor.

By the time she fell, he was shoving through the Witch’s

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door to the receptionist’s office. It was crowded with the dead, some of whom were beating on the door to the inner office, beyond which Sam could hear the voices of the mayor and the shopping center manager. The now familiar stink of death permeated the small space.

Sam raised his shotgun, knowing that at this range he could destroy several of them. But as his fi nger tightened on the trigger, another materialized right beside him, a burly, bearded guy who could have played the blacksmith in any western movie ever made. The spirit man caught the barrel of Sam’s gun and wrenched it from his hands before Sam even registered his appearance.

The guy grinned—an oddly redundant expression, because a jagged cut across his throat already smiled redly—and hurled the shotgun out the open front door, into the hall. Sam tried to snag it from the air, but the toss was too high and fast.

The spirit folk turned away from the inner door, fixated on this new and suddenly unarmed opponent. Sam counted nine of them. A couple held guns, some had knives or other edged weapons, while a few, like the woman in the hall, were empty-handed.

The blacksmith spirit, brandishing a rusty straight razor, stepped between Sam and the open doorway.

This is not going well
, Sam thought.

One of the knife-wielders, a young man barely out of his teens, if that, sliced the air toward him, mouth dropping open in silent fury. Sam dodged the attack but came within range of another spirit man, 338 SUPERNATURAL

who clubbed the side of his head with two huge fi sts.

Sam saw stars, stumbled, and caught himself on the receptionist’s desk before he fell. The moment gave his opponents time to swarm over him, though, and they pummeled him with fists and feet. A knife blade caught his left shoulder, cutting through jacket and fl esh.

Sam caught the wrist of the woman who had cut him, bending it back until she dropped the weapon.

He scooped it up, remembering the grizzly that had been destroyed with its own spear. She tried to back away but he pushed through hands that tried to re-strain him and sank it into her chest.

She flickered and disappeared. He had hoped to hang onto the knife, but it vanished at the same instant. He would have remembered that if he hadn’t been taking punishment from a dozen sources at once. A gunshot went off, barely missing him and passing through two of his opponents without injur-ing them.

To get a moment’s respite, he worked his way toward the front of the reception desk, where a rolling chair was tucked into the knee well. Another blade of some kind jabbed into his ribs but he writhed away before it could sink dangerously deep. He fl ailed out with his fists, battering the spirit people back far

enough to let him make his move. Kicking the chair away, he ducked into the knee well.

There, he allowed himself one quick breath, relishing the brief moment when the fists of the long-dead didn’t batter him. He knew he’d have to put a quick Witch’s

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end to this. Their blows were starting to weaken him, and though he’d avoided any mortal wounds so far, there was no telling how long that would hold.

To give himself room to work, he pressed his hands and shoulders into the knee well of the wooden desk and pushed off with his feet, standing suddenly and raising the heavy desk as he did. He spun it around to knock away the nearest of the spirits, then threw it with every ounce of strength he could muster.

It didn’t hurt any of those it hit, but it did knock a few down and pinned one against the far wall.

Mostly, what it did was give him a little space. He reached into his pocket, yanked out a spare rock salt shell, and tore it open. Gripping the primer end, he swung his hand in a wide, fast arc. Rock salt sprayed everywhere. The dead screamed soundlessly as it hit them, and the room filled with their freakish fl uttering glows as they vanished.

When it was over, there were only three left, including the blacksmith with the razor. Sam reached for another shell but the blacksmith caught his right hand before he could pull it from his pocket. With his left hand, Sam caught the blacksmith’s left—the one holding the razor. Both men struggled, and for a second Sam worried that the blacksmith would prove too strong. But he managed to turn the razor’s rusted blade toward the man, and then jerked his head forward, butting into their locked hands and driving the blade into the blacksmith’s chest.

The man released him and fell back, clutching at his fresh wound. The razor sailed from his hand. Sam 340 SUPERNATURAL

grabbed it up, sliced it through the next nearest spirit—

accomplishing nothing that he could determine—and kept it moving, slicing it across the blacksmith’s throat on a line similar to the one that had caused his fi rst death.

The other two, a Native American woman and a Hispanic man who held the only remaining fi rearm in the room, backed away from him. The woman clutched a crude stone knife that would do her no good at that range, but Sam got the sense that the man just wanted enough distance to aim and fi re his rifl e.

He still had a shell in his pocket, though. Before the man could level the weapon at him, Sam tore into it and scattered its contents at the two spirit people.

They reacted as the others had.

After the light show, the room was empty.

Breathing heavily, Sam tapped on the inner offi ce door. “It’s all clear,” he said.

Someone on the inside was turning the knob when the dead woman from the hallway appeared in the outer doorway, holding Sam’s shotgun. She aimed it and pulled the trigger.