Thunderbird Falls

CHAPTER 28

By six-thirty, the serpent overflowed the kitchen. Rounded stretches of scales and muscle curved through the walls and spilled onto the backyard lawn and into the dining room. Robert’s bedroom was directly above the kitchen; when I looked into it, the serpent lifted its head through the floor and gave me a flat, silver-eyed stare. The house was still standing, even though if I put my hand against one of the creature’s shining scales and pushed I felt resistance before falling through. I had a half-assed theory at the back of my mind that because I was sentient and able to accept the thing as real, it was more real for me than for the house, which dealt solely in things which were there or not there. There was no in between stage. I had a few moments of longing for the days when there’d been no in between for me, either, but the wish didn’t last long. It was easier to accept in the thick of things than from a remove of a couple months, or even just a day or two.

“Joanne?”

I pulled out of Rob’s doorway and closed the door behind me. Garth stood at the head of the stairs, smiling so hard it felt like he might lighten the mood in the whole house. No one was exactly grumpy, but everyone, even Erik, the two-year-old, was nervous and twitchy. Melinda was gnashing her teeth with the frustration of being useless. Faye’d taken up a post at Mel’s bedside, keeping her occupied with stories while everybody else arrived. “Hey, Garth. You made it. Is that everybody?”

“Marcia’s not here yet. But there’s somebody downstairs who wants to see you.”

Morrison. Cold nerves laced around my stomach and tightened so hard I burped. Garth blinked and grinned. I rubbed my hand over my stomach and managed a smile. I couldn’t think how the hell Morrison had found out what was going on here, or why he’d care. Well, Billy would’ve told him, maybe, but why would he care? I straightened my shoulders and put on my best brave soldier face. “Okay.” I thumped down the stairs behind Garth.

Colin, looking ridiculously healthy, sat in a wheelchair in the living room, beaming around at everyone. He turned the chair as he heard us coming down the stairs. I could see the shadows of his spirit snake around his shoulders, but the weight didn’t seem to affect him at all. His grin got wider. “Amazon!”

“Colin! My God, they let you out? You look fantastic.” He did. My inverted vision didn’t bother me at all anymore. It seemed normal for his hair to be black and streaming bits of light when he moved his head. His color was better and there was more meat on his bones, although how that could be affected in the two days since I’d last seen him, I wasn’t sure. “My God, you look great!” I bent to hug him and kiss his cheek. His temperature was a little high, but everyone’s was, in the hot weather.

“I’m just out on temporary leave,” he said. “One of modern medicine’s miracles, they keep telling me. Never seen a reversal like this. I made the big eyes at them until they agreed to let me out for a couple of hours. I’ve got to get back before nine.”

“I hope you don’t mind him coming along,” Garth said behind me. The smile in his voice buoyed me up.

“Nah, of course not. A little good news’ll help us all get through the rest of the night.”

Garth’s voice lowered. “Is it going to be bad?”

I shrugged my eyebrows. “Looked in the kitchen yet?” He shook his head no, and I tilted my head in the right direction. “Go see for yourself.”

He came back a few moments later pale and wide-eyed, just as everyone else had done. “How’re we going to take care of that?”

I shook my head. “I wish I knew. I don’t really understand spellcrafting, Garth.” I sat down on a couch, rubbing the scar on my cheek. The couch sucked me in; four bouncy kids did in even the best of springs. I edged forward, trying not to disappear entirely into the cushions. “I’ve watched it tear a hole in the sky and another one in the earth. Can we make a spell to just move something?”

“Translocate,” Marcia said from the doorway. I lifted my head, relieved. “This isn’t exactly where we agreed to meet,” she said as she came in.

“I know. Something came up. What’s translocating? I mean, how do you do it?”

“There has to be an exchange. We can’t simply move something from one place to another. We have to take something back in order to make up for the mass of the thing we’ve placed elsewhere. Where is it?”

“The kitchen.”

Marcia was grim, not pale, when she came back from the kitchen. “I don’t know if a translocation spell will work on something that’s not solid. It may, and then all we’ll have to translocate is air, which would be the best-case scenario for the house.”

“But,” I said, hearing it hanging on her words.

“But it may not be possible. The ritual to bring the spirits across, and Virissong with them, may have to be completed before we can make the exchange.”

“Solidifying that thing will destroy Billy and Mel’s house, Marcia. There’s got to be another way.” I put my hands on my thighs and pushed myself upward.

“What is ‘it’?” Colin asked. I looked at him, then at Garth.

“It’s a…” I looked at Colin again. “Oh, hell, I’ll just show you. You’re here anyway.” Despite the knot of worry in my lungs, I couldn’t help grinning at Colin. “God, it’s good to see you out of there. You look so much better.”

He lifted an arm and flexed the biceps. “I’ll be breaking all the girls’ hearts soon. C’mon, I wanna see this thing that’s got you guys all spooked.”

I put my hands on the wheelchair handles, waving Garth away. “I’ll take him. Being an Amazon’s gotta be good for something.”

“Wait till I tell the guys back at the ward I’ve got an Amazon girlfriend,” Colin said cheerfully. I laughed and wheeled him down the hall to the dining room and kitchen.

The serpent’s silver glow was bright enough to hurt my eyes. Colin didn’t lift a hand to protect his own eyes against the brilliance, and after a moment I remembered it was probably black to his eyes, like it had been when I first saw it in the Dead Zone. I wondered if it glowed black to him, or if the glowing was just a spiffy side effect of my stupid inverted vision.

It heard us coming and lowered its head through the door to flick its tongue at us. It was nearly full-sized now, its head longer than I was tall. It was going to destroy Billy’s house, and I couldn’t figure out how to stop it.

“Jesus,” Colin whispered. The serpent’s cold eyes focused on him and it thrust its head forward a few feet, until its flat nose was almost touching his chest. I backed up several steps, pulling Colin with me. The serpent flicked its tongue and followed, then opened its mouth and hissed a wave of hot irritation over us. I could see the sides of the door through its translucent skin, its body already too wide to fit through the opening. For the first time I thought I heard the house creak protest against the thing’s tremendous weight.

“It’s kind of gorgeous, isn’t it?” Colin whispered. I gaped at the top of his head, then at the monster.

He was right, though: it was. Not like a snake; it was too much more than a snake to simply have a snake’s deadly grace. It rolled forward another foot or two, its gleaming spires slicing through the wall and ceiling above it. That time I did see the wall shudder, plaster loosening from the ceiling. I backed up another couple of steps, watching first the ceiling, then the serpent. “It is,” I admitted. “It’s gorgeous in a kind of ‘I’m going to crush you to death in my gigantic coils’ way. Seen enough?”

“I guess,” Colin said reluctantly. I backed out of the dining room, entirely unwilling to turn my back on the serpent. It reared up a few feet and spat. Colin and I both flung our arms over our faces, yelling. The venom passed through us, harmless as a breeze, and hit the floor behind me with a wet splat. The hardwood gave an acid hiss, a foul odor steaming up as the varnish was eaten away and the wood beneath it scarred. I twisted to stare at it, then jumped backward, avoiding the damp ruined floor as I yanked Colin’s wheelchair back over it. The rubber tires melted and stretched, sticking him in place for a few scary seconds before my determination overcame the gooey residue and the chair schlucked loose.

“Joanne,” Colin said in a small voice. I looked up to discover the serpent’s head pushing through the dining room door we’d just abandoned.

“Oh,” I said. “Shit.” I backed up faster, hoping there weren’t any toys to trip over, and led the serpent into the living room.

“Out of the way, out of the way, please get out of the way.” I dared glance over my shoulder so I could navigate the living room without knocking anyone or anything over. The gathered coven members leaped to the sides. “I don’t know why,” I said, still very fast, “but it’s following us—”

“Me,” Colin said. I stepped on my own heel and nearly fell over, staring at the top of his head again.

“Jesus. You’re right. It’s following Colin and I’m going to see if I can lead it out of the house.” By the time I was done explaining my clever plan, I was out of the living room and nearly to the front door. I fumbled it open and pulled Colin onto the porch. The serpent stopped and reared its head up again, mouth open wide with anger. “C’mon, big guy,” I said to it. “Just a little farther.”

Then I took a step back and realized I had no good way to get Colin off the porch. I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to maneuver the wheelchair without dumping him on his ass, even if he was still slight and I was reasonably strong. “Shit,” I whispered again.

The serpent struck so quickly the only thing we had time to do was fall over. Its blunt nose slammed through the wooden floor of Billy’s front porch. Colin and I crashed backward down the stairs, landing in a painful tangle of wheels and legs and elbows. I kicked the wheelchair away and struggled to my knees, getting my shoulders under Colin’s arm. He was both pale and grinning maniacally, which made me wheeze laughter despite the circumstances. “Having fun?”

“This is a whole lot better than the cancer ward,” he said, still grinning.

“You’re crazy.”

“Yeah, but I’m cute.”

We surged to our feet, which is to say mostly I surged while Colin leaned. The serpent lifted its head, shaking it violently, while I stared in dismay at the ruin of the porch. It wasn’t quite rubble, but the laws of physics were starting to apply to the giant monster, and there was a sizeable, nose-shaped hole in the wood. The house creaked and groaned as Colin and I backed up, the serpent following us. We crashed into one of the trees and scrambled around it. The serpent screeched anger and struck again, sending tattered branches and leaves to the ground.

“If we can get it to do that one more time, I think it’ll be out of the house entirely.” The larger part of the serpent was coiled in the garden, though its tall spires still ripped through the front of the house. I could see boards starting to come loose as paint flecked to the ground in a blue snowstorm.

“Oh, sure,” Colin said. “That’s a great idea. Let’s get the monster snake to attack us again.”

I giggled, once more despite myself. “You actually sound like it is a good idea.”

Colin gave me a surprisingly rakish grin and staggered away from my support, leaning heavily on the tree we’d hidden behind. “Oooh Mr. Snake!” he yelled. “Over here!” Then he turned and ran pell-mell, elbows and heels flying every which way, for the far side of the front yard. I yelled something panicked and incoherent and went after him. There was a tremendous tearing sound behind us and we both turned to look.

The last of the serpent’s spires had torn a foot-wide slice through the front of Billy’s house. It began over the front door and reached more than halfway to the roof, not quite splitting the building entirely. Staring at it, all I could think was, insurance companies don’t cover acts of gods, and then the serpent struck at us again.

I don’t know if it missed or if its brief acquaintance with solidity came to an end. There was crashing and banging and someone who sounded suspiciously like me yelling, “Begone, foul beast!”, after which there was a bout of semihysterical giggles. When I dared open my eyes, the serpent loomed over us, black sunshine streaming through the silver tentacles that danced around its head.

“Are we dead?” Colin whispered. I shook my head.

“Nope.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” I whispered. “I’ve done dead before, or at least mostly. It doesn’t look like this.”

“Oh.” Colin was quiet a few seconds. “Was that supposed to be reassuring?”

“Yeah,” I said again. Colin nodded.

“It wasn’t.” He looked up at the thing. “What’s it doing?”

“I have no idea.”

It coiled itself taller above us, its head pointed up into the sky. Its gills flared, making a wide silver hood. Air screeched through them, a high, lonely howl. Colin and I both shivered and hung on to one another harder. “That wasn’t a mating call, was it?” Colin asked nervously.

“Christ, I hope not. Okay.” I closed my eyes, hoping not being able to see the thing would help me think. It didn’t, but at least I got to sit there for a moment in the blissful darkness without worrying about the world on the other side of my eyelids. “Okay, it’s not in the house anymore, which is a huge improvement. We can do the ritual now without destroying everything.” I opened my eyes and looked around the garden. “Without destroying the house, anyway. Wanna run for it?”

“To where?”

“Back inside. Where everybody else is.”

Colin held his breath, then nodded. I got his arm around my shoulders and pushed us to our feet. The serpent didn’t move, still fixated on the sky. “Okay,” I whispered. “Let’s go.”

We took one step. The serpent snapped its gaze back down to us, glaring. Hypnotizing, even. I suddenly understood the compulsion some people had with watching snakes. Except I was afraid this thing could actually hypnotize us. “Um…”

Colin straightened up, shrugging out from under my shoulder. The serpent’s head moved a fraction of a foot, watching him instead of me. “I think it wants me,” he said, keeping his voice low. “I think you can go.”

“Are you nuts?”

He flicked a smile at me without turning his gaze away from the hulking serpent. “Yeah, but I’m cute. Go on, move, see what happens.”

I took a reluctant two steps away. The serpent’s silver gaze followed my movement, but it didn’t move. I took one more step. It was interested in Colin. “This,” I hissed, “is not really convincing me I should leave. What if it eats you?”

“Hey.” Colin shrugged. “It beats the cancer ward, Amazon. Go on, go get everybody. Maybe it won’t eat me.”

“Shit,” I said, and went.