"And if the Rowan's Daughter and the Child of Bright Waters put down their guns, you will kill anyway. Let the child go. Let him go, and you can leave this place still living. Shed his blood and you will die."
It was her own voice, her own throat and tongue and breath turned hollow-sounding and an octave lower. Kate felt the air and the vibration, but she hadn't spoken. She took a step forward, two hands now holding the sights steady on her enemy's forehead, and she hadn't willed that move, either. Fire burned in her veins and along her tendons, relaxing them, quieting the shakes. Her eyes had gone weird, she could hold rear sight, front sight, target, all in sharp focus at the same time. She'd never seen like that before.
He'd thrown illusions at her the last time, and she'd fired where she thought he was, and he wasn't there. Missed. Twice. Illusions wouldn't work in this place, in this time. She knew it, though she had no way of knowing why or how. What she aimed at, she'd hit.
Kate felt him look to the east, to the edge of orange light breaking the horizon. More weirdness, fog and low clouds offshore every night for the last week, yet there sat the moon split by the sea, rising in broken layers like a sectioned orange from mirage refraction. Seen without turning her head.
The humming of the earth grew around her and she could pick out every leaf of every rowan and every blueberry bush, every stone and pebble and blade of grass. She had become the field, the rowans, the stone circle, the altar, the power flowing here. Kate felt as if she had been shoved off into a corner of her own head. And that corner was screaming, weeping, begging Jackie to put Jeff down. Anything to save him, save both of them.
Her voice, the Stone's voice, echoed again, firm, nothing of her tears in it. "If the moon springs free from the water before you let the child go, you will die."
The saw-tooth stone blade shifted a hair, and Kate smelled blood. Not possible, blood had very little smell, and the cold evening breeze flowed past her to the altar. But she smelled it, and felt hunger for it. The Stone had waited alone for many years. No one had brought it gifts.
"And would you kill the child of your body, Señora? To save the life of your peon? Even to save your own life? Your daughter lives because of me, because of my powers, my skills."
"I would kill both of my children, to cleanse my stone and soil of your touch." Kate screamed silently at the words her own mouth was forming.
The brujo looked to the space between Kate and Caroline, to the third woman, the third witch who had formed out of the night and shadow. "¿Por que? Mother of the Stones, I speak to you. I offer these to you. I will give you these, first this child of your land and then the priestess who abandoned you and then the daughter of the waters that flee from you to the sea. Gifts to your power, blood to your hunger." He paused and smiled. Kate saw those crocodile teeth again.
"I am not a Christian, great lady. My people have taken the Spanish Christ and the Spanish God and made them new names for the powers we always served. I know you better than these children of a younger age, know what you need. I can serve you far better than they will. I ask little in return, por favor. A small thing compared to the great power you will drink from them and others to come."
The woman chuckled, and the sound raised hairs on the back of Kate's neck. She'd thought every hair on her body was already standing straight on end. Whoever, whatever, that woman was, she wasn't the stone circle made flesh. Kate knew that, no matter what the brujo thought.
"What is this small favor that you ask, man of bone and dust?" The woman's voice sounded like dry bone and dust, itself.
"Señora, I ask little. Only the merest trace, un poco, a hint of the power this blood will bring to you. Enough to heal this body the witch forced my soul to wear, enough to stop the pain . . ." And his voice turned ragged into a gasp, Jackie's body trembling and sweat sheening her brow under the red glow of power.
Kate jerked two steps forward, her gun lowered, mother's care for her suffering daughter burning through the circle's hold for an instant. The brujo straightened, Jackie straightened, and his hand, Jackie's hand sought Jeff's throat. The glass blade nicked his throat again, and Kate's hands, the circle's hands, brought her sights back on target.
Puppets. All puppets. Who pulls the brujo's strings?
Can Jeff feel that cut? Is he conscious? Does he hear us wrestling for his life?
The brujo half turned to Kate, as if he read her thoughts. "No, he does not feel pain, Señora. He dreams this. I am not cruel. The jaguar god, the one your thieves sell and sell and sell again, that one is cruel, born of a different land and time. But I only do what you have forced me to do."
Psycho, everything he does is someone else's fault. He was forced into it. He holds the knife but refuses to accept any of the guilt sliming it.
And then he gasped again and his hand lifted to the side of his head, gesture of pain, and her hands and finger twitched and the .44 Mag blasted the night silence and the stone knife and the hand holding it into splinters. Jackie twisted away from the blow, Jeff falling free of her shoulder, and she screamed and stared at the bloody ruin
