A jag of blue light arced down from somewhere far above and sheered through the barrier between her outstretched hands. Creed watched, fascinated. The fault in the otherwise perfect surface pulsed angrily. The crow men let their poles dangle, taking only random pokes at the wretch struggling weakly in the fire pit. They focused all of their attention on the woman. Miniscule fissures rippled out from the fault, breaking the barrier open inch by inch. The whole thing reminded Creed of ice on a river – though it had been years since he’d seen water freeze.
The three crow men turned to the fire and jabbed violently with their poles. It was, Creed thought, as though a single thought controlled them. They speared the wretch in the blaze from three sides, the red hot iron tips driving deep though his charred living corpse, and lifted him above the fire. They held his writhing body easily.
Creed was torn. Did he watch the crow men or the woman? He thought about Brady, and Silas. He thought about the woman whose locket he wore.
The crack widened. The barrier screamed like a living thing. The sound was worse than any death rattle he had heard.
Creed saw things – faces, hands, oddly elongated bodies that glowed and writhed, trying to make their way to the widening rift. Something held them back. It was as if the woman had opened a hole and rolled the edges back, forming a wall. The fissure was narrow at first, but widened slowly.
When Creed looked back toward the fire the crow men turned toward him. For a heart-stopping moment he thought they had seen him, but they weren’t looking at him, they were staring at the woman’s back. Whatever was going on in that camp, he wasn’t going to be able to do anything if he was stuck on the wrong side of the barrier. That said, he couldn’t believe the woman, or the crow men, breaking their way through was a good thing, either. All he could do was watch as she tore the fault wider. When it was wide enough for a man to slip through, he made his move.
Keeping low to the ground, he ran, hard, fast, parallel to the fire. He had his gun in his hand before he took the first step. It was habit. Even though he knew on a gut level it was useless, it felt good to hold it. The first of the crow men started to turn as he drew level with the fire. Creed spun and fired from the hip.
Three shots.
Each bullet caught a crow man full in the face, splitting bone and feather as they went in deep. That single second of gunplay was without doubt some of the best shooting he’d ever managed, but he didn’t have time to savor it. They staggered, and the poles they were using to brace the wretched thing between them shivered. One of the iron tips tore free, unbalancing all three crow men. As one, they loosed a horrifying screech – it was halfway between the cry of an eagle and the laughing bray of a hyena.
The woman, as though startled, turned a fraction casting a backward glance over her shoulder. Creed didn’t hesitate. He charged at her. At the last possible moment, as she raised her hands to protect herself, he threw himself to the side, scrabbled in the dust and, even as she twisted, hurled himself headlong into the gaping fault she’d opened in the barrier. With a scream of rage she clawed at him, but that broke her contact with the shimmering wall and the fault sealed itself in an explosion of light and sound.
On the other side Creed scrambled to his feet and turned back, guns raised. He saw the woman staring at him in fury, and then her expression changed. Of all things, she smiled. Then, with no warning, she threw back her head and laughed. The sound was distorted by the barrier. For a moment it sounded eerily like a parliament of owls screeching.
Creed turned his back on her. She was on the other side of the barrier and as much effort as it had taken her to open that one crack, he was pretty sure there was nothing she or her bird men could do to hurt him through it. He crouched low and started into the Deacon’s camp. Heart pounding, he started out around a row of camp wagons and headed for the back of the great tent. Whatever was going down in there, he didn’t think it was going to be long before things started to get interesting.
He wanted a good seat.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Lilith strode to the fire and pushed the nearest of the crow men aside contemptuously. She stared down at the wretched, struggling carcass that was all that remained of their prisoner. She pulled a small pouch from the folds of her long, dark dress and teased it open. She took a pinch of powder and – blowing on it once – she sprinkled it over the fire.
The thing in the pit stiffened. Its skin crackled, grew as red as the coal feeding the flames that tormented it, and blackened. As the undead, pleading eyes stared up at her from the fire, the earthly remains of Benjamin Jamieson fell away to ash.
Seconds later, the pit was cold and dead – nothing but blackened soot remained. The woman pulled out a larger pouch, leaned down, and very carefully scooped the cinders from the pit. She let them fall through her fingers and into the pouch. When she was done, she sealed the drawstrings and touched the leather to her lips before handing it to the nearest of the crow men. It nodded, taking the pouch from her. The feathers had reformed around the wound in its face, leaving no trace of the damage caused by Creed’s lead.
'When the time is right, you will know,' she told it. 'You know where the weakness lies.'
The bird man turned, and with a harsh cry took to the air, losing his human form in a flurry of wing beats as it blurred into the shape of a very large, very dark crow. The others followed. The woman stood for a moment, watching them depart, and then stepped back to the barrier and stared at it as though she might penetrate the shield with the force of her gaze alone.
'Soon,' she said softly. 'Soon all debts are paid.'
Then, with a soft whisper of silk, she melted to shadow and was gone.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Nothing moved. He heard the music from the main tent, and he heard The Deacon’s booming voice. It carried clearly but for some reason he couldn’t make out the words. The sermon was oddly rhythmic. Creed listened to the roll of the preacher’s voice. It wasn’t like any sermon he’d ever heard, but given the Deacon was about as far from any preacher he’d ever come across it didn’t surprise him. Walking away from the invisible barrier and all of the hells he’d seen on the other side of it, Creed doubted if much could surprise him anymore.
He kept to the shadows. Just because he couldn’t see anyone outside the main tent didn’t mean there was no-one out there. He didn’t trust appearances where the Deacon was concerned. The man was almost certainly paranoid when it came to his own safety, which meant he’d be pretty much aware of every shadow worth jumping at and would have set one of his weird flock to watching them. Creed didn’t want anyone getting in his way before he at least figured out what in hell was going on. Actually just knowing half of what the hell was going on would have been nice.
His mind raced, thoughts like blind horses stampeding: what had happened to Brady? The thought of the sheriff in that tent listening to the odd, chanting sermon with the flickering candlelight didn’t seem right. Scratch that, it seemed damned wrong. Creed had known Moonshine a long time, and he’d figured to find the man outside rolling a smoke and waiting for the rest of Rookwood to come back to their senses. There was no sign of the sheriff. Creed sniffed the air but there were too many peculiar fragrances mixed up in it to pick out Brady’s smokes.
The front of the main tent beckoned. It wasn’t exactly inviting, but there was something about it that