Dead of Winter (47 page)

Tom backed away, aiming his pistol.

Father Xavier held up his cross-dagger at the entrance and chanted in Latin.

203

As the Ojibwa braves pulled their canoe onto shore, Anika ran up the snowy hill.

“Wait for us!” Swiftbear yelled.

She stopped, her heart beating wildly. She tried to locate Fort Pendleton in the whirling sleet and fog. Only one corner tower was visible. Manitou shrieks echoed from the fort.

The eight warriors, clad in hooded fur parkas, gripped their spears and gathered around Anika. She glanced at Swiftbear. His nod filled her with courage she desperately needed.

“Stay close to me.” Swiftbear pointed with his spear and hollered. The warriors charged up the hill, their battle cries clashing against the storm winds.

204

Avery hurried up the four flights of stairs. He stopped at the landing outside his home, fell against the rail, coughing up spittle of blood. His joints popped, and he screamed in agony as his forearms and hands stretched. His elongated finger bones broke free from the skin, the tips shaping into claws.

He cried out in pain. The hunger returned, more ravenous than before, the demon within him craving blood and meat. Avery ran into his home. Found Walter Thain’s skeleton crawling with rats. Ravens cawed at one another over the flesh inside the ribcage.

Meat! Meat! Meat!
chanted the preternatural thing taking over Avery’s mind. It wanted to rip into what was left of Thain’s innards and suck the marrow from his bones.

No!
Avery bit into his own hand, fighting back with all his will. He went into his study. The snowstorm blew the balcony doors open. He stepped outside and looked over the railing. Moonlight reflected off a swirling fogbank that enshrouded the fort. He could barely see the rooftops of the cabins. A horde of skeletal beasts moved within the smoke. They clawed at the walls of Noble House, their elongated arms shattering second-story windows. Windigos that had once been his employees howled up at their boss.

We have come for you,
spoke Gustave’s voice inside Avery’s head.
Jump! Offer us your flesh.

“No…” His mind spun with vertigo. He gripped the railing.

Remember your promise to me, Avery?

He had a vision of himself ten years ago. A man who had lost a fortune in the fur trade. Standing on the Victoria Bridge overlooking the St. Lawrence River. Ready to jump. Until, out of thin air, Gustave Meraux approached and offered Avery Pendleton a dream life. Wealth, power, women. Every lust and insatiable need fulfilled. All Avery had to do was join the Hell Fire Club and do business with a group of gentlemen who had sold their souls to the Devil.

Your soul belongs to me. Along with Willow’s.

“No, you can’t have us!” He went back into his study. Shut the balcony doors. He would never surrender, nor would he allow that Satanic libertine to have his wife.

“Avery?” Willow called out from down the hall. “Help me!”

“Coming, darling!” He found his pistol in the study. Checked the chambers. Two bullets.

You are a failure like me, son
, whispered his father’s voice.

Avery stared up at the gray family portrait of his parents. His father pressing his hands down on young Avery’s shoulders. The boy frowning as he gripped a red violin. When he was thirteen, Avery found his father and mother lying dead in their bed, dressed in their fanciest ballroom attire. The side of his mother’s head was blown out. The back of his father’s head was a gaping hole. Blood stained the headboard and pillows. A marriage immortalized by death. Avery always knew he would end up a failure like his father. Suicide was the Pendleton legacy.

You can’t escape from the demon inside you,
crooned Gustave’s voice.

As Avery raced down the hallway, he fell forward, loping with one knuckle against the floor, the other hand gripping the pistol.

You belong to us now.

“No!” Avery entered his wife’s bedroom. “Willow!”

He could smell her in the darkness—perfume, feminine musk, and blood pumping through her fast-beating heart. He struck a match and lit an oil lamp. Willow was lying on her bed, wearing a red ball gown and white porcelain mask. The same masquerade costume as the night he had met her.

Avery’s clawed-tipped hand stroked her hair. Of all his lovers, Willow had been the most beautiful. His precious doll. And with the kiss from two bullets they would spend an eternity together. He removed her mask and jumped back, releasing a scream that echoed throughout the Pendleton home.

205

Anika and her warriors reached Fort Pendleton. The front gate’s double doors stood wide open. The snowy ground had been trampled, leaving behind dozens of footprints. She crouched, observing several that were larger than a bear’s. The fog was so thick, she could barely make out the buildings.

Swiftbear made hand signals. One by one the warriors crept through the gate.

Anika held her breath as she walked close behind her uncle.

Up ahead, animal shapes moved through the mist, some hunched over, others walking giants. Two of the braves charged into the whirlwind and were yanked off the ground, their screams cut short.

“Keep to the fence!” Swiftbear shouted.

The warriors fought against windigos that were half human, half animal. A spindly child ran toward them on all fours, snarling. Anika gasped as her uncle impaled it.

A guttural voice called from above, “Anikaaaa!”

A rattleboned creature in a red uniform leaped down from the watchtower. Lt. Hysmith growled, his sharp teeth stained with blood.

Anika ran down the fence. He lumbered toward her on stilted legs. “Come back here, you little whore!” His elongated arms swooped, talons slicing the air just above her head.

She backed into a corner. Hysmith swatted at her spear, taunting her. His eyes were the color of maggots. His face split into a ripsaw grimace that stretched from ear to ear. He opened his arms out wide. “How about one last shag, for old time’s sake, ey little whore?”

Anika burned with rage for all the nights Hysmith had raped her down in the cellar. She howled like a she-wolf, yanked a knife off her belt, and threw it into the lieutenant’s throat. He gripped the handle, choking on his own blood.

She charged, spearing the Hysmith windigo in the chest. It released a guttural sound as she shoved it against the fence, driving the point deeper. The beast flopped, its flesh sizzling from the spear that had been blessed by the Mediwiwin.

Thinking of all the native women who had suffered like her, Anika pulled out a tomahawk and chopped off Hysmith’s head. The lieutenant’s body collapsed like a fallen scarecrow.

Anika, shaking with adrenaline, pulled her spear out of its chest, her other fist gripped tight around the bloody tomahawk.

Swiftbear and four braves emerged from the fog. Her uncle looked down at her kill and then nodded for Anika to follow. Thinking of Tom, she ran with the warriors along the stockade wall, wary of the animal shapes moving inside the snowstorm.

206

At Noble House, Avery backed away from Willow’s bed. “Jesus Christ!”

Her glistening red face had no skin. Her mouth, no lips. The teeth opened in a skeletal smile. Bulging eyeballs turned toward Avery. “I’ve been waiting for this night.”

“No…” Avery dropped the oil lamp on the bed. The sheets caught fire, lighting up the room.

Willow rose off the bed, reaching for him. “Let us take you to where the children play forever.” Blood gurgled in her throat.

“Get back!” Avery aimed his pistol, shooting her in the chest.

She stumbled backward, but somehow remained standing. She cocked her head. “Did you really think my lover would let you kill me, darling?”

Avery backed away, aiming at her head. His shot was knocked wild by a sudden blow to his arm. A fiery pain erupted as his gun hand snapped loose and flew across the room. Blood spurted from his severed wrist. Avery wailed, turning around.

Gustave Meraux grinned as he gripped an axe. “Hello, old friend.” His rail-thin body was covered in rats.

“No…” Avery backed away, holding his bleeding wrist against his chest.

“It’s time to pay the piper.” Gustave swung the axe. The blade snapped Avery’s knee. He collapsed against his wife’s beauty table. Another chop severed both his legs.

Avery screamed in agony.

Gustave cackled as his body fell away into a chittering horde of rats. They fed upon Avery’s bleeding stumps, crawled up his body. Avery’s back arched violently, his spine popping, as his ribcage stretched. The corners of his mouth tore open, and he felt teeth cutting through his gums.

The spreading flames caught the wall on fire. Avery clung to consciousness, his eyelids drooping.

“Don’t drift off now, darling.” Willow’s silhouette approached. The blaze highlighted her hair, the red sinews of her cheek and neck. She picked up a rat, petting it. “You need to eat. You’ll need your strength where we’re going.” Her exposed teeth grinned as she shoved the rat into Avery’s mouth and fed the hungry demon within.

207

Downstairs, rabid beasts snarled at every boarded window. White hands shattered the glass. Tom fired his pistol as bony fingers jutted between the clapboards and tore at the crack in the front door.

Father Xavier stood at the threshold, chanting, “We exorcise you, each unclean spirit, each power of Satan, each Legion!” He doused the clawing hands with holy water. The flesh smoked, burning the skin like acid. “Be uprooted and put to flight from the Church of God!”

The hands retreated from every window. The blizzard raged around Noble House, rattling the clapboards. Gusts of freezing wind and snow blew in through the broken door and windows.

Tom leaned against a wall, catching his breath. “Can you hold them back?”

“For the moment.” Father Xavier’s face looked haggard. “We have to seal off every window on this floor.” The exorcist went down the wall of the fur-trading room, chalking lines on the floor.

Tom coughed, shivering. The cold thing inside his torso shot out frosty tentacles through his arms and legs. His bones felt as if they were turning to ice. He drank from his canteen, but only a few drops fell onto his tongue. “Damn it!” He hurled the canister. His body shook with a primal hunger. He gazed at Father Xavier. The exorcist had his eyes closed as he stood at a window, whispering a prayer. His flesh began to smell like honey-cured ham, like marinated venison.

Eat the priest!
commanded Gustave’s voice inside Tom’s head.

“No, I can’t!” He growled and ran into the ballroom. Most of the wide-open chamber was pitch dark. The only light came from a fire burning in the hearth. He went to it, relishing the heat against his shivering body.

He rolled back his sleeves. Blue veins sprouted across his pale skin. The bones became more prominent.

“God, get this thing out of me!” Tom pulled out the cross-dagger from his belt. The metal felt hot in his hands. He dropped the cross. It hurt his eyes to look at the Christian symbol. He kicked it into the darkness.

Tom leaned against the mantle. He searched inside for something to cling to. Something to ground him in his body. He thought of Anika. The savage woman who had repelled him. The medicine woman who made crow stew and read Jane Austen novels. The whittler of flutes and animal totems. He pictured her wildcat green eyes. Her rare but precious smile. Anika Moonblood was the strongest, most defiant woman he had ever met. Her native ways clashed with his own, and yet somehow she penetrated all of Tom’s defenses. Thinking of her now gave him a reason to live. And then he remembered something she had given him. He reached into his breast pocket, pulling out a flat, white stone carved into a buffalo. His totem.

It is your guardian,
Anika had said.
You can call on its medicine for strength.

He pressed the stone to his chest and connected to the half of him that was Ojibwa. “I call in the spirit of White Buffalo.”

His mind flashed with a vision of a massive, white bison charging through the trees. His body filled with strength.

The beast within recoiled.

208

Anika sprinted between the cabins. Behind her ran the others, fleeing from an eight-foot-tall windigo. It looked like a skeletal bear. A paw with long talons lashed out from the mist, grabbing one of the scouts. He wailed as the beast pinned him to the ground and ripped open his belly. A pack of smaller carrion eaters joined in the feast.

Anika continued running between the houses, leading the hunting party into Tom’s cabin. She bent over, catching her breath. Only Swiftbear, herself, and two young braves were left. They looked scared after losing their brothers and cousins. Anika felt sadness that four men had lost their lives for her mission. She touched her necklace, praying for the Mediwiwin to protect the others.

Outside came screeching. Everyone ducked in the shadows as more jackal-faced creatures ran past the windows. When they were gone, Anika searched the bedrooms, but Tom wasn’t here.

Her uncle met her eyes, and she looked away, trying to hide her sorrow.

Swiftbear whispered, “He must already be a
wiitigo
.”

“No.” She shook her head. “I can feel him. He’s alive.”

He touched her arm. “I’m sorry, but there are too many for us to fight. We must retreat.”

“Go if you must.” Anika gripped her spear and tomahawk. “I’m staying.”

Swiftbear frowned. “This is no time to be stubborn.”

A brave named Squawking Crow pointed out a window. “A fire! A fire!”

Anika peered outside. At Noble House, part of the roof was on fire.

Her heart lunged with fear and hope.

209

In the ballroom, Tom picked up the cross-dagger. The silver metal was no longer hot. Nor did the Christian symbol offend him. He slipped the blade under into his belt.

The entity inside him had pulled back its frosty tentacles and burrowed deep within his belly. He ached as if he’d swallowed a snowball. What he’d give right now for a hot cup of tea.