She couldn't be sure, but the Circuit Rider's grim lips might have lifted in a smile.
'Run!' Katy yelled and Jett jumped from the stone. The goats had scattered enough so that she had a clear path to the Subaru, or to the woods if she thought the trees offered more protection. But she didn't want to leave Mom. That 'together' thing bit both ways.
'Come on, Mom,' she said.
Gordon recovered and reached for Katy, catching her by her long red hair. He yanked, and she was jerked backward. 'Come here, bitch. My things never leave me, even when they're dead.'
He raised the sickle, and its blade caught the blue light and re flected a curve of icy fire.
That's when the Circuit Rider erupted.
He rose in a vengeful flurry of black-clad limbs, his pale head nearly luminescent in the headlights, eyes two cold pools of dis eased ichor.
'You want to ride in my saddle,' Harmon Smith said. 'But are you worthy?'
Startled, Gordon turned to face his deceased ancestor, still grip ping Katy's hair with one gloved hand. But 'face' wasn't the right word, Jett thought, because Gordon's was hidden by the coarse cloth and the Circuit Rider's waxy lumpen features could hardly be described by that word.
'I've proven myself worthy,' Gordon said. 'Know me by my fruits.'
'You don't know Solom,' the Circuit Rider said. 'And your tree is diseased.'
Jett heard thundering hooves and thought some big billy goat— Methuselah, Seth, Jacob, or whatever Old Testament fucker Gordon had picked for a name—was charging. She looked away from the stone stage to see Rebecca and Old Saint galloping toward her. Rebecca wore her head again, but her skin had gone grave-gray and mottled, the ragged flesh of her neck flapping in the breeze, her long dark hair billowing behind her like the threads of a ragged burial shroud.
Before the ghostly horse and rider could reach her, Odus rumbled in on his paint pony, hunched over the pony's neck, whisper ing in her ear, then raising his voice to a shout. 'I knew you'd send the right tool,' he shouted at the sky, and Jett figured he was just one more squirrel-shit-nutty Solom inmate, except he rode like a holy warrior on a suicide mission.
As she watched, Old Saint grew more solid, his hooves ham mering thirty feet away, clumps of dirt flying in his wake. Rebecca, too, grew more solid, though still bloodless, her lips black, skin withered, face shrunken by decay.
'These are
'I'll never need drugs again,' Jett whispered to herself just be fore the horses collided.
Chapter Thirty-six
Sue waved her climber's pickax in front of her as if it were a charm, but the three goats circling her seemed wholly unim pressed. She'd had the idea—absurd in hindsight, though she'd wasted little time in retrospection— that she could scare the goats away long enough to get Sarah down from the hood of the Jeep. But Sarah was sharp enough to save herself. A woman didn't live to get that old without a strong sense of self-preservation.
Sue didn't pay much attention to the doings in the center of the clearing. She was too intent on getting Sarah to safety and then making a beeline down the mountain. But as Odus Hampton and the creepy woman sped hell- bent toward one another, Sue couldn't help but look. So did the goats, and Sue noted that the woman was
'About time you came to the rescue,' Sarah said. 'I thought I'd hooked up with the wrong spunky sidekick for a second there.'
'I haven't rescued either of us yet,' she said, digging the point of the pickax into the Jeep's soft-top. The vinyl-coated fabric ripped and she pulled back on the climbing tool, working the gap wider. A new top would cost her five hundred dollars, but she was sure she'd find a way to write the expense off on her taxes. Surely there was a category for supernatural casualty.
A goat gained enough traction to leap forward and nip her shoe. Sarah stomped on the animal's head bouncing it like a coconut and with about as much effect. Sue peeled the top back. 'Get in,' she said and as she helped Sarah work her knobby limbs over the windshield and into the Jeep, a siren scream of twin whinnies slit the night.
Odus figured the tool would be given, the sword put in his hand at the moment of truth. High philosophy had never been his strong point. He was more comfortable with the kind of mental ramblings brought on by the bottom of a whiskey pint, and his truths were those of nature: trout bit better just before a storm, wild turkeys were smart enough to walk around in a hunter's tracks, marigolds and onions kept bugs out of the garden.
Now he faced a truth that was nature, grown wild with the night, legs flailing, tail twitching, neck hunched low as she charged. Odus wasn't sure if he'd guided Sister Mary or if the horse had propelled itself through some inner command. Either way, the paint pony had enough giddyup to break both their necks. As the distance narrowed he got a good look at the thing riding Old Saint. He'd worked for the Smiths before Rebecca had been killed and had always thought her the sweetest of ladies. Plus she cooked up a mean parsnip pie.
But now she looked to be serving up a different kind of mean ness, one brought by the anger of the grave.
Odus wasn't sure what was going to happen, but the showdown felt right. Maybe he wasn't supposed to take down Harmon Smith after all. Maybe Odus was just supposed to knock the preacher's legs out from under him in the form of his horse.
But Old Saint looked massive and solid not two hundred years dead. Twice the weight of Sister Mary, the horse was liable to knock them into next week, skipping Sunday on the way.
Odus was close enough to see the steamy breath pluming from Old Saint's nostrils and to look into the cruel caves in Rebecca's skull where her eyes had once perched.
Fourteen hundred pounds of horseflesh met and the forest shud dered.
Alex had used up the rounds in the Colt Python, but the goats still circled below him. A couple had fallen, those whose limbs had been clipped by bullets, but none of them had died, despite shots that landed between the eyes or dead-on in the heart. Sure, the wounds slowed them down a little, but they also made them an grier, like a hive of bees that had been smoked. The marijuana they'd munched must have made them ornery instead of mellowing them out.
Alex adjusted his position in the branches and fumbled the AKR submachine gun into his lap. He kicked back the lever and surveyed the clearing. Weird Dude Walking and the scarecrow creep were going at it like a Republican and a Democrat fighting over a defense contract. The little neighbor girl, the Goth with the dyed-black bangs, stood alone in the clearing as the two horses smacked into each other.
The thunder of slapping meat was like an artillery blast in the September night.
The horses collided, and for one long second, they merged. The spotted horse and the giant black horse were a tangle of knotted knees, forelegs, hooves, and stringy hair. They appeared to be one quivering mass of flesh, and the fellow who worked on the Smith farm was thrown clear, rolling toward the Goth girl. Rebecca, or the rickety rack of skin and dry bone that wore her features, be came part of the orgiastic wad of insane magic.
To Alex, it wasn't supernatural magic or illusion, just another test run for the government. No doubt he'd have to be depro grammed (if they took him alive, that was, and he hadn't made that decision yet) after it was all over. But for now, he had a pouch full of ammunition and enough goats on hand to just about repay the property loss he'd suffered.
He locked down on the trigger and the Russian-made subma chine gun kicked out its sweet staccato song.
Katy tugged away from Gordon, but his fingers were hooked into her hair. She screamed at Jett when the horses slammed into each other, but Jett had already jumped back.
