Cormac tried to think of a simpler way to ask this, and couldn’t, so just repeated it. “The power—was it already here at Donner Pass, or did you have to raise it from scratch?”
Peterson looked away. Chuckled, a bit madly. “That was the funny thing. I thought. . .all that pain, all that hunger—the place was famous for it. Here, here is where I would stake my claim, I would draw that power, that despair all to myself—”
“But?”
“There wasn’t any. There’s just. . .the bronze plaques and the tourist shops and the badly named restaurants. The tragedy didn’t leave a mark. Not a supernatural one.”
Ah, Roland did his work well. He’d be so pleased!
“So I had to do it myself. Make my own mark.” He grinned. “Shouldn’t be long now. You’re almost there. Thank you.”
“Yeah, fuck you too.”
There is one more symbol to etch, Cormac. The summoning isn’t finished. There’s more to this than Peterson.
She showed him the sign, a medieval hermetic symbol for strength, for truth. Carefully, line by line, he drew it in the earth at his feet.
“What are you doing?” Peterson asked.
Cormac ignored him. A vertical line, a widdershins curve—
“Stop that.” The man stepped forward like he might actually try to stop Cormac. Wouldn’t take much; he could probably just push him over. But Elton Peterson held back, acting like someone who’d lit a fuse and wasn’t sure what the explosion was going to look like.
Two more marks, dashes over the first line. Amelia murmured arcane words, and much like with other battles they’d fought together, he felt their spirits twist together and become something stronger than the sum of their parts. Her knowledge and age, his physical being anchoring them to the world—it shocked him every time. The first time they’d come together like this, back in prison, he’d almost flinched away, afraid of losing himself—and afraid of what he might accomplish. But he hadn’t. He’d reached out to Amelia, she’d grabbed hold, and they’d become powerful. Like they did now. A summoning went out, a flare without light. And then it was gone, finished.
Again, a pause, stillness.
Peterson gripped the flashlight hard and looked up and around like he expected to be attacked by a swarm of wasps. “You can’t stop this,” he declared in a tight voice. “You’re already dead! There’s nothing you can do to stop it, the power of your death is already mine—”
“Wait for it. . . .” Cormac murmured. He didn’t know what was going to happen but he expected it to be good. By some definition of good.
Right. . .about. . .now, I think.
There was a soft groan, then a rushing sound, a growing breeze blowing through the pines, which creaked at the pressure, the sound increasing until the breeze turned into a gale, tightly focused, whirling in a space with Cormac at its center. He ducked his head, and Peterson put up his arms to protect himself. The flashlight fell out of his hand and broke when it hit the ground. Somehow, though, the spot of forest remained lit by an indistinct glow.
Cormac knew this sound, these smells. The fierce, unnatural wind that suddenly whipped by, bending trees at dangerous angles, snapping branches. Dust rising up in a whirlwind, obscuring sight. The smell of something unnatural burning to death. This was a doorway from somewhere else opening up before them. Any moment, they would see what demon came through to their world.
Times like this, he missed his guns, even as he knew that none of them would help here. Instead, he wished for holy water and wooden stakes, silver bullets and crosses of gold. Anything.
Faith, Amelia whispered. Have faith.
Faith in what?
Faith that whatever is about to appear isn’t here for us.
A ritual sacrifice had three components: the person making the sacrifice, the thing being sacrificed—and the god or being the sacrifice was offered to. One figure in this tableau was still missing. Peterson had forgotten something important—he thought he was making sacrifices to himself. But power like that attracted attention.
Cormac missed the moment when the thing took form. The wind and swirling dust became a shadow, and the shadow gained mass. A huge animal came through the trees, stepping toward them. A medieval war horse, pitch black and massive, with steps that shook the ground. Its eyes, peering out from behind a thick fall of mane, were glints of obsidian, and it studied them with disturbing intelligence. Measuring them.
The rider was cloaked, billows of thick fabric falling around his saddle and legs, draped over his shoulders, as if he had come from a very cold place. Leather gauntlets on his hands, a close-fitting bronze helmet settled over his head. A bearded chin was all that was visible of his face, apart from another set of black, glinting eyes. In one hand he held the horse’s reins; in the other, a sword, but where the cross guard should have been was a set of antique scales. He could hold the sword vertical and measure the world in those bronze bowls.
Amelia quoted: And lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.
“That’s the Book of Revelation,” Cormac said softly. And this was the Third Ho
rseman. Famine. What did it mean, that Famine should come to this place? “You have some kind of spell that’ll protect against this?”
If she had been standing beside him, she would have shaken her head slowly.