She heard, she felt, answering booms from Caroline's old shotgun and saw her daughter's body jerk to right and left as slugs and shot tore into it. Kate's pistol clicked, empty, and she kept it aimed at the empty space where Jackie had stood and clicked and clicked again. The roar and thunder of gunfire echoed away through the night into smoke-tainted silence.
She stood, a stone graveyard statue, empty gun in her hands, until other hands took it from her and stowed it in her shoulder holster, still loaded with dead cartridge cases. She should reload. Basic doctrine, never carry an empty weapon. God only knows when you'll need it next. Caroline remembered. She reloaded before she moved.
Cold darkness walked up beside her, past her, past Caroline, past Jeff sprawled groaning in the heather, on to the altar and the body lying there. The dark shrouded head looked down. "Your teachers and the teachers of your teachers came on my people living at peace in their canyons. The skinwalkers killed and ate my people, ate their flesh, boiled their bones, cracked their skulls and marrow for the sweetness hiding there. Ate the lives of farmers to stretch the lives of killers. You will not eat another soul."
The black form bent down and lifted black smoke from the body, molded it into a long snake-roll like soft clay, pinched it between her fingers, tore it into shreds and poured it in fragments from her hands. The smoke faded into night air and vanished.
The dark woman turned to Caroline and seemed to stare into her rather than at her. "It is good that you warned me about the second shape you carry from your father. It is good that you warned me that the ways of the sea are not the ways of my canyons. Standing here in the light and shadow of great power used for evil, it is good that I know these things. I now see what had been hidden from me, when we stood far from your waters. I might have judged you as I would judge one of my people."
And then she nodded from Caroline to Kate. "I now see why your people mixed their blood with hers." And she vanished like smoke herself.
Damn-all notion of what that meant. Kate still felt as if she'd been turned to stone, with a stone's slow thoughts and cold heart. I just killed my daughter. I don't feel a thing. I just killed my daughter to save the boy who should have been my son.
Body. She should check the body. Caroline was helping Jeff. Kate forced herself to check the body.
It lay bleeding, Jackie lay bleeding, dark stains flowing without a pulse from massive wounds, more wounds than Kate could count. Bleeding on the stone, on the altar. The blood ran only a little way before it vanished. Soaked in. Blood wouldn't soak into that kind of stone and vanish. Wouldn't glow blue, wouldn't shimmer with silver highlights, wouldn't hum with power like a high-voltage transformer.
Jackie's body melted into that light and flowed and faded, leaving nothing, not even ash. The stone had eaten it. Kate stared at the altar, frozen, shaking, the world turning dark around her.
The stone circle had been holding her upright, moving her, using her voice and hands, her gun. It left her. Her knees failed, and she pitched forward into that darkness.
*~*~*
Black sky. Stars. Full moon hanging low above a fogbank offshore. Shadows and silver light, natural light, somehow seemed strange. Kate stared up at the sky. Her head hurt and cold tears leaked across her cheeks.
Full moon. Lying in a field, high on a ridge, blueberry barren, her field, the stone circle.
She was lying down, feet higher than her head, same as after Alice had found her trembling and cold from the shock of finding that body out here weeks ago. She ached all over, like she'd unloaded a ton of Sheetrock yesterday. By herself, by hand, and hand-carried it up three flights of stairs. Jeff must have taken the day off.
Jeff.
Kate struggled to sit up. Something held her down, a weight on her chest. A strong hand, with strong shoulders behind it. She focused. Caroline's face above the hand and arm and shoulders, ill-met by moonlight.
"The circle. Moonrise. Jeff."
Caroline looked puzzled, face in full light. "Jeff's safe. We killed the brujo. It's over."
The aurora had faded. Kate remembered the aurora, red and green fire overhead, apocalypse sky. Death riding a pale horse, and the rest of the crew. Her head hurt more, thinking about it. She lifted one hand and poked at her skull, wincing. Caroline didn't stop her from doing that.
"You fell and hit your head. I don't know if you hit one of the rocks or just the ground. No blood, so I'd guess dirt. Try moving your feet."
Kate moved bits, hands and feet, fingers and toes, and everything seemed to work when and as she told it to. Caroline let her sit up. Kate's head spun, and the moon seemed bright enough to make her squint. She moved to sit on one of the stones, one of the circle, not the altar. Still, she felt strength flowing into her from the rock underneath her, from her land, her soil and stone and water, and the pain eased. Her brooch, Grannie Rowley's brooch, glowed faintly in the moonlight, orange and green, colors in the moonlight, she'd never seen that before.
Caroline circled the stone circle, spiraled around it actually, out and out and out, checking the ground. Witch-sight or sharp young night-vision, she walked like a cop searching for clues at a crime scene. Which was probably just what she was doing. Kate was sure they'd just committed some kind of crime, so picking up
