head.
“No,” she said. Mae brushed her hand over his head. He was bleeding. He was also still breathing, shallow and hitching, but enough. He still lived. But this wound would be more than she could tend on her own. He needed the doctor in town. Quickly.
She set the shotgun down to pick up the child.
“Witch,” the wind whispered.
A hard chill ran down her spine. The voice sounded like the Strange. The same Strange she had shot. The same Strange she thought she had killed.
“I am the one who killed your man,” the voice said. “And now I will kill you.”
A beast growled from between the trees. Mae saw a flash of fang and claw in the moonlight. A wolf! She scrabbled for the gun and fired, sending one more precious bullet and an orb of gold light that bent the trees like a hurricane force.
In the split-second aftermath of the shot, the Strange screamed and a wolf snarled in pain as if that single shot had struck both creatures.
Mae did not wait for her eyes, half-blind from the gunshot, to clear. She snatched up the boy and the gun and ran.
No time to reload. No hands to reload now that both were full of boy. Her heart pounded hard, fast. Her house was just ahead. If she could make the house, she could set the boy down, load the gun, fire the Colt.
The boy whimpered and grew even heavier in her arms.
Mae bent under the sudden increase in weight and nearly lost her balance. She scrambled to keep hold of the gun, hold of the boy, and hold of her feet beneath her. The child cried out, even though he was fainted away. Mae caught herself on one hand and one knee, then shifted the shotgun for a better hold to lay tight across the boy’s back.
The child startled away from the touch of the Madders’ gun, yelling for all his worth, his voice a shot of pain bursting up through the night.
And beyond his voice, she heard a wolf growl.
If she turned, the wolf would be on her, would strike her, hitting the child in her arms first, killing him. Then her.
Run, run, run. Faster. The door was just a few yards, a few feet, a few steps.
The boy stopped struggling, most likely fainted again from his wounds, boneless and heavy as an ox. Mae’s blouse was wet with blood, her arms aching and shaking. The gun slipped from palm to curve of finger to fingertips in her sweaty hands. She was losing her grip on it.
The wind picked up, the Strange voice riding the air. “Glory be. The witch is free. Now I shall take what I see.”
Steam blasted across her back as a hand slammed her into the door, nearly crushing the child, and knocking the wind out of her. Mae gasped to get air in her lungs, her ears ringing from the blow.
Hands, fingers, hard and cold and sharp as blades, tore the back of her dress, tore her flesh, tugging at the gun, her hair, the child.
Mae yelled and yelled and somehow pushed into the house. She lost hold of the gun, but kept the child safe in her arms. She ran to the bedroom, unminding the open door. She lowered the boy quickly into the bed, groaning at the pain across her back. He woke and clung to her, holding her down by the neck like a rock on a rope, a pain-rigor smile on his face, his eyes wide and glossy, bloody spittle on his lips.
“Let go,” Mae said. “Elbert, let go. I’ll be back. You’re safe. You’re safe now.”
It took some force to pry the boy’s hands from around her neck. He was holding tight. Too tight. She was sure she left bruises on his little wrists, but she finally unlatched his grip, though his fingernails scratched a necklace of blood around her neck.
She turned, dizzy with pain and fear. She had to get the boy to a doctor. He was wailing in agony even now. But she had to kill that Strange first, and the wolf. Mae drew her fully loaded Colt and crossed to the door.
No Strange in the doorway. No wolf.
She was sure it was the same Strange as before, even though she knew that could not be possible. What sort of living thing put itself back together when it had been blown to bits?
She stood a yard or so away from the doorway. The Madders’ gun was out there, beyond the wooden step. Jeb’s trinkets along the wall hummed, perhaps lending what protection they could. Such a small hope against the hulking weight of the night that breathed and shifted, a living, brooding thing just beyond her door. Creatures waited for her out there. For the taste of her blood.
Mae whispered a spell, a protection, a blessing of magic and light to surround her home and all within it. The child’s wail grew louder.
She kicked a stool in front of the door so it couldn’t slam shut behind her; then Mae Lindson fired her Colt into the shadows beyond the door, and rushed forward. She bent, and grabbed for the shotgun.
From the screaming in the night, she reckoned the bullets had found a target.
She moved the stool and slammed the door. Mae threw the lock and reloaded both guns, her hands shaking, blood streaming down her back and neck. The Strange pounded the door, hinges she had just repaired already groaning under the assault.
The Madders’ gun was charging, but its gears worked slower than last time.
The house wouldn’t stand long. No, if she was to get the child to a doctor, to his family, she’d have to run now, before the roof came down and buried them both.
Mae rushed to Elbert, who was still as death, his eyes glossy red and staring at the rafters. Gone out of his head with fear.
Something slammed onto the roof and rolled like a boulder down the shingles. The windows rattled, and claws scraped against glass and pane.
“We need to go, Elbert.” She wrapped him up in the blanket, tucking it tight around him as if he were a babe instead of a small boy. “I’m going to take you home to your mama and pa now.”
He stirred to that, blinked, and started crying again.
“There, now, bear up just a bit longer.” Mae gathered useful things into her satchel and pockets. Her tatting shuttle, an extra blanket, water, flint and steel. Around her waist she strapped one of Jeb’s work belts, buckled with pockets of leather that held tools. She slid her skinning knife onto that, then fastened her bonnet tight under her chin. She took a kerchief and folded it over the child’s head, trying to stanch the bleeding.
His head wound was grim. Over the kerchief, she tied a woolen hat she had knit. It was too big for the boy, but it would help absorb the blood and keep his head warm from the night.
The wind and the Strange pushed, rested, then shoved at the house so hard, she threw her arms out to the side as the foundation shifted.
Mae scooped up the boy, and, thank the heavens, he wrapped his arms around her neck and held on. The shotgun was ready, no longer humming, the needle on the gauge cocked hard to the right. Mae opened the back door, quiet as could be. The Strange was still out front, rattling the shutters. Mae ran to where Prudence was sheltered beneath the eave of the shed, her eyes rolling with fear.
Mae set the boy on the shed floor, took up the saddle, and geared Prudence as quickly as her shaking hands could manage. She ran back to the boy, Prudence in tow, and hoisted Elbert up onto the mule, swinging up behind him. She tucked him tight against her, one arm over his chest to hold him close, and still let her reach rein and stirrup. Mae rested the rifle across the saddle horn.
She pressed her heels to old Prudence’s side. “Get up now.”
Prudence didn’t need urging. From round the back of the shed, Mae set her off at a gallop toward town, up the rise in the hill, then down the drop of the tree-filled gully. Once through that edge of forest, she’d go straightway to Hallelujah.
She didn’t want to enter that forest again, but the boy didn’t have any time to spare. He was fever hot, as if coals lay beneath his skin.
Prudence shied at the edge of the forest.
“Go on, get,” Mae said, putting her heels to her again.
Prudence locked her legs and refused to take even a step forward into the shifting shadows.
The boy whimpered, squirmed with pain.
