“You can’t have them,” I said, not knowing quite what I meant by it, but absolutely clear on my sincerity.
Karen snarled and brought her foot down hard. She was aiming for my knee, but only scraped along my shin as I rolled. Another blow landed on my shoulder, shaking my balance but not badly enough to keep me from regaining my feet. I was going to lose. I was hurt and comparatively weak, and Karen had years of training and a supernatural serial killer. I faced across the narrow space, and I knew that I had no chance standing against her alone.
I also knew there were thirty plus people just outside the shed. I hadn’t managed to talk Ex out to safety. I hadn’t managed to get Sabine free.
But I had gotten Karen’s undivided attention, and that was going to be enough. I bolted for the door.
The air outside was cool, the fog thicker than when I’d gone in. The house glowed, twenty feet away, and distant as a vision of elfland. I ducked by instinct and something whizzed past my head to thud against the wall. I skidded to a halt, the grass slick under my feet, and dropped to one knee. My side was on fire, my breath short. I was pretty sure nothing had punctured a lung but I wouldn’t have put a lot of money on it.
After the brightness of the halogen lamps, the world was a tissue of shadows and mist. Karen roared out from the lit doorway, murder in her voice, and three dark forms tackled her. She went down, twisting like a cat. I heard a soft impact, and one of the bodies rolled free as two more piled on. Someone shouted, and a volley of answering calls came from the distant trees. My little army charged.
Ex appeared framed in the light, his crucifix held loosely in his hand, his mouth open in confusion. Chogyi Jake stepped out of the shadows, putting a hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t kill her!” Mfume called out as the cultists of Legba descended on Karen. His voice was strained, but not weak. “Hold her down, but do not kill the horse!”
They piled on her like a football team, and Karen, screaming, went down under the sheer weight of bodies. I let myself sag a little. I’d gotten a cut on my neck, but I didn’t remember when. A trickle of blood ran down my collarbone. Karen screamed. Someone cursed.
“Jayné?”
Aubrey was at my side. He looked worried.
“I’m okay,” I said. “Don’t hug me.”
He knelt, his hand fluttering between my arm and shoulder, uncertain how to help and unable to keep from trying. I thought it was sweet.
“We have to get Sabine out and get Karen in there,” I said. “Ex has to get Carrefour out.”
“I know,” Aubrey said. “I know. Don’t move. You’re hurt.”
“Yeah. Clear on that. But I’ll still be hurt later, and we need to fix Karen now.”
“We’ve got it,” Aubrey said. “We’re taking care of it.”
I let my eyes close. The sound of the tussle was like a television in the next room. Karen’s voice was high, shrill, and animalistic. Other voices—Aunt Sherrie, Omar, other men, other women—competed with it yelling instructions or threats or shouting in triumph. Mfume exhorting them not to kill. I thought I heard Sabine wailing behind it all. I lay down, my head resting against cool grass. I felt like the ground itself was lifting me up.
“Mfume?” I said.
“His arm’s pretty messed up,” Aubrey said. “He won’t stop, though. We tried to make him.”
He’s a big boy, I almost said, but it seemed like a lot of effort. I made do with a long, stuttering sigh. Running footsteps came toward me, familiar as a known voice clearing its throat. I opened my eyes to Ex.
“What the hell is going on?” he said. “They’re killing Karen.”
“They won’t kill her. I don’t think they’ll even hurt her if they can help it,” I said. “But we need to drive the rider out of her body.”
“What rider?” he said. “She was fine yesterday. She’s fine. When did she get possessed?”
There were tears in his eyes. Of course there were. In the rush and fear for him, I’d never taken a minute to think how this would look from his perspective. How it would feel. He’d been this woman’s lover. He’d shared her bed and her body, he’d gone to her when I pushed him away, and it had all been a lie. Carrefour had used Karen, and Karen had used Ex. If he’d been prone to taking inappropriate responsibility for the safety of people around him before now, this one was going to send him through the roof.
“I can explain everything,” I said. “But… Ex, I am so, so sorry.”
I levered myself up. The blood from the cut on my neck had soaked the parts of my shirt that the fog and dew hadn’t. Ex shook his head once, and then stopped.
Everything stopped.
Aubrey went still, and the fighters in the dogpile. The thickening mist froze where it was, and the distant crickets fell silent. With a howl like meat tearing, Carrefour rose up, scattering Amelie’s congregation like leaves.
Karen was gone. The rider’s body had broadened and thickened, splitting the seams of canvas shirt and pants. Its fish-pale skin was veined in black, and claws like knives clicked at its fingertips. I scrambled to my feet. A flash of motion to my right was Joseph Mfume pulling a length of silver chain from his pocket with his good hand, his shotgunned arm limp and blood-soaked at his side. Carrefour looked from one of us to the other, and its broad, inhuman face broke into a parody of a grin. I said something obscene.
It had taken us to the crossroads, the natural environment of riders, the place where the Venn diagram of reality and hell overlapped. We weren’t thirty to one. It was just me and Mfume, neither of us whole, against an engine of rage and death, and suddenly I didn’t like our odds.
Carrefour raised its bladed hands and bounded toward me.
TWENTY-FOUR
I fell back, scampering toward the cargo van, thinking I could get it between me and the rider as cover. Carrefour loped forward, lashing at me as I ducked. The windshield shattered. Safety glass pattered down on me like hail. I spun around, my arms out like I was on a highwire and keeping my balance. One blow, and Carrefour had destroyed the windshield and peeled back a swath of metal from the van’s hood. A second swing rocked the van with a low boom. Carrefour lurched around the corner of the van to face me.
Not every trace of Karen had vanished. I could see the echo of her impish smile, something familiar in the angle of the thing’s shoulders and the way it moved its arms. Traces of the woman still remained in the beast, and if anything that made it worse. Carrefour blinked bloody eyes and shrieked. I saw the blow coming, and I stepped under it. I sank my fist into the mottled flesh where its solar plexus would have been if it were human, and I heard its breath hiss out, felt the heat of its body pressing against mine. The energy of its qi, the raw will of its consciousness, writhed against me and I felt a heat blooming in my own belly, rising to press back. I shouted, and it growled, set its feet into the soft ground, and pushed. I tried to shift away, but it got a shoulder against my chest and leaned in. Its weight pressed the air out of my lungs, the door of the van behind me bent in an inch and then another. My broken ribs flared with a pain that put stars in my peripheral vision. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t lever myself out. I got an arm free to box its ears, but the blow was weak, ineffective, doomed.
I started to pass out.
Something bright hissed above my head, and Carrefour screamed. The sound seemed distant. The weight lifted and I slumped to the ground. I watched the rider’s wide legs stagger backward, my mind urging my body to function, to rise, to run. Mfume’s voice was calling out, passionate and angry, in a language I didn’t know. I rose to my knees, sank back, then forced myself up again.
Mfume’s chain had buried itself deep in the flesh of Carrefour’s back, and Mfume stood in the space between house and shed, straining with his one good arm to pull the thing back. Dark blood seeped down the rider’s side and it swung its arm wide, its claws raking the metal of the chain but not quite able to grasp it.