Page 2 of The Salt-Black Tree
Whatever Dima had forced down her throat worked wonders, or maybe Nat was stronger than she thought. In any case, she found her legs would finally work again, pain receded like the tide going out on a pebbled beach, and she pushed ineffectually at the gangster’s disconcertingly broad chest. “I’m all r-r-right.” Even the teeth-chattering was going down.
A dark line showed high on Dmitri’s left cheek. It looked like a knife-cut, but there was no blood, just flesh swiftly sealing itself back together. The sun’s bleary red eye slipped behind distant, serrated mountains, and a crackling-cold wind brushed over Ranger’s house. There was an uneasy mutter from the barn, animals moving; Nat shuddered.
What else did he have in there, next to the big black motorcycle-horse? She found she didn’t want to know; there was a limit to evenhercuriosity. Go figure, adulthood was 40 percent figuring things out for yourself, with another 40 percent of avoiding knowledge that might drive you crazy.
Not that she had far to go to reach that state. The remaining 20 percent of being grown-up was probably taxes and approaching mortality, though the idea of Uncle Sam pursuing Dmitri Konets for not filing a return was bleakly hilarious.
Was there an Uncle Sam? She’d probably find out, if this kept up.
“You came back.” Dmitri tucked his chin slightly, peering into her face. A flush of effort pinkened his cheeks, and his black suit was a bit rumpled. Had he and Ranger got into a fight?
I don’t care.Nat supposed she looked a little worse for wear, too.I just want to go home.
But that wasn’t quite accurate, Nat discovered. The thought of going back to her mother’s little yellow house, halfway across the continent on South Aurora Avenue in Brooklyn, was even more unappetizing than riding Ranger’s predatory magical horse.
Nat’s backpack, warm and heavy, finally settled against her shoulders like it was relieved to be off the carnival ride as well. It was the closest thing to “home” she had now, smaller and far more bedraggled than a snail’s spiraling domicile.
“I don’t w-want to be a h-h-horsethief,” Nat managed. Her throat was so dry the words were husks of themselves, left propped and forgotten in a field while a faded scarecrow leered from a listing pole.
Dima’s faint flush drained away, and his jaw hardened. “No other way to get what you want,Drozdova. Not when rich bastards sit on it.”
Oh, so you’re a real Robin Hood.Go figure, twenty seconds in his presence again and she was already irritated. The sharp unsteady feeling was a tonic, filling her with fresh strength, and her legs felt more like her own usual bodily possessions now instead of just insensate noodles. “I’m h-happy to s-see you too.”
Ranger reappeared, swinging the barn door closed; Dmitri stepped away from Nat like she was carrying something fatally communicable. She swayed, but the steady fire in her chest poured strength through the rest of her. The sense of deep, inalienable energy filled her again, and she wondered if she looked burningly vital, impossiblyreal,like the two men.
The twodivinities.
“Sorry about that.” Ranger’s iron-toed cowboy boots ground icy gravel as he hurried towards her; he could probably crack a boulder by kicking it. “You did right well, Nat. He just takes some gettin’ used to, that beast.”
So I gathered.And even if she liked the cowboy, even if he saidhe liked her more than her mother, he still hadn’t warned her that the horse—or whatever it was, trapped in a shapeshifting body—was very strong, not to mention wholly murderous. “It’s all right.” There was nothing else to say.
The Black man’s fringed jacket was torn, too, and Nat was abruptly tired of men and their squabbles. Even if she didn’t agree with Mom on everything, Maria Drozdova’s frequent assertion that males were saved only from being more dangerous by their unending stupidity held a great deal of water.
“No, it ain’t.” Ranger glanced over her shoulder, his sculpted mouth tightening. “Y’all better go. I’ll do what I can, horsethief.”
“I could call you something worse,” Dima muttered, and jabbed his left hand at the glossy black muscle car crouched leonine before the ranch house’s stairs. His right, Nat saw with a sinking sensation, was full of that same dull-black gun he’d had before, except with no long silhouette of a silencer. “Come,zaika. Into car we go.”
Wait a second.“I—whathappened?” Nat shuddered; the bright white vapor of her breath shivered and plummeted, thin ice breaking on hard ground with a soft musical noise. “What the hell?”
“Oh, naw.” Ranger shrugged, a loose easy motion, and stretched his neck, tilting his head from one side to the other. His lean, capable right hand rested on a revolver butt, slung hip-low on his broad leather belt; the matching gun on his other side gleamed secretively from its well-worn holster. “Hell’s entirely different, ma’am, pardon my French. You go on now. Come back and visit anytime.”
Yeah, not so sure I want to, now.Nat summoned a polite, weary shadow of a smile, and tacked unevenly for the black car. Dmitri walked backward, placing each foot with a cat’s finicky delicacy, and Ranger’s boots made soft stealthy sounds as he set off in a different direction.
Towards the road, not his house. Maybe they hadn’t beenfighting each other at all. The wind was knifelike, her breath froze as it left her mouth, and though Nat had quickly grown used to not feeling the weather, she shivered.
“Potoropis”.” Dmitri peered past her, his black eyes narrowed and his lip lifting slightly. Strong white teeth gleamed, and though his snarl wasn’t directed at her, it still sent a shudder down her back. “Quickly,devotchka. Not many left, but always more come.”
Well, that’s not terrifying or anything.Nat’s boots were almost too heavy to lift; her backpack now weighed a ton. Even the stealthy, hidden glow of the Cup and the black-bladed Knife in its depths wasn’t comforting. “More what?”The starving things, of course. Great. Fantastic.
“You didn’t tell her?” Ranger laughed, every scrap of warmth gone and his voice cold as the gangster’s. “’Course not, why am I surprised? Get gone, I’ll keep your trail clear as I can.”
Dima swore, lifting the gun. Its muzzle pointed past Nat, carefully notather, but she still hurried, not liking how big and bottomless the hole at the end seemed.
Like the Well, only without the quicksilver glitter in its throat.
She skirted the black car; its engine throbbed into life and she flinched, letting out a small hurt sound. Suddenly its interior seemed like an old friend she couldn’t wait to meet again, but she paused at the open passenger door, the dome light sending a distorted golden rectangle onto the pavement, touching the edge of the porch’s wooden stairs.
There was very little twilight on the prairie in winter; day ended like a descending guillotine blade out here. Glimmering stars, peeking through dusk’s veil, were snuffed behind a lowering sky pregnant with fresh snow. Nat tasted the penny-metal of approaching precipitation, and a tiny, cold flake kissed her cheek.
