Ghostcountry's Wrath Read Free Page A

us.”
    Calvin stepped into a pair of jeans. “Sorry ’bout that,” he mumbled. “Sorry I had to be so vague, too, but I didn’t trust the phone not to be tapped.”
    “By whom?” David asked.
    “By the police in Whidden, Georgia, for one; by the G.B.I., for another. Probably the feds as well. Shoot, for all I know, they’re snoopin’ now!”
    “I would think it highly unlikely that this room’s bugged,” Alec intoned sarcastically. “And I’m not sure anything can snoop through solid log walls.”
    David folded his arms across his chest. “It’s time you talked, Fargo.”
    “Okay, okay.” Calvin sighed. “Well, to give you the quick and dirty version: I’m sure you remember our, uh, adventures of last week….”
    “How could we forget?” David snorted. “World-hopping like crazy, shapeshifting, daring rescues, Faery naval battles, you name it.”
    “There’s something you don’t know, though.”
    “What?”
    Calvin took a deep breath. “You remember that night in Jackson County when I conjured up that fog, so I could summon Awi Usdi, the Little Deer, so he could call a real deer for me to get blood from? So I could use it to empower Alec’s ulunsuti to open a gate to that place those guys were holdin’ Finno?”
    “Okay…”
    “Well, I got something else as well,” Calvin whispered shakily. “Or something answered, anyway. “Guys, I…I called Spearfinger !”
    “Shit!”
    Calvin nodded grimly. “The lady—if you can call her that—herself. Seems she’d been followin’ us—you, in particular—ever since the first time we went to Galunlati. And when I opened the gate between Worlds for Awi Usdi, she sneaked through as well.”
    David’s face was very pale. “And…you’ve had to deal with her.”
    Again Calvin nodded. “And she’s killed, Dave! She…she even killed my dad!”
    David sat down with a thud. “Oh, Jesus!”
    An even grimmer nod. “And a woman and a couple of kids.”
    Silence.
    “I killed her, though—I hope.”
    “You hope ?”
    A shrug this time. “She’s a supernatural creature not native to this world. I’m not sure what to believe. But I saw her die. In this world I saw her die.”
    “Let’s see,” Alec mused. “She’s that shapechanging, liver-eating ogress from Galunlati, right? The one with power over stone—”
    A knock rattled the door, jerking David back to the present. “What’re you guys doin’ in there?” Aikin demanded. “Tonto’s lady just drove up—and I’m stuck out here with a sot!”
    “Tough,” David called through the door, even as he moved to open it. “I’m in here with a Cherokee sorcerer!”
    *
    “I hope you know what a lucky son-of-a-bitch you are,” David muttered to Calvin twenty seconds later, as they and Alec neatly sidestepped the resigned Aikin and the reeling Darrell (who had somehow achieved the porch) and bounded down the split-log steps into the sparse stand of pines that comprised the cabin’s front yard. A laurel hell fenced it upslope to the right, beyond which the Enotah National Forest began in earnest. To the left, a narrow rutted road snaked up the wooded mountainside from MacTyrie three miles away. A motorcycle and two cars crouched near the porch. Cal’s BMW bike, Aikin’s old brown Nova, and the battered red ’66 Mustang David called the Mustang-of-Death (as of the previous weekend, closer to simply a dead Mustang, he thought dully).
    But a newish red-and-black Ford Bronco had joined them, knobby tires straddling the terminal ruts. Silver mylar on all side windows wrapped the interior with mystery and obscured the occupants, if any. “Now that raises an interesting question,” Alec smirked, when they stopped beside it. “Is it an insult to call a shapechanger a son-of-a-bitch?”
    “Only if he hasn’t eaten dog,” a new voice volunteered: low and musical, with a soft Carolina drawl—and definitely female. David whirled around, cheeks aflame with a mix of irritation and