Page 42 of The Salt-Black Tree
Georgia’s thin, sharp shoulders twitched as she laughed again, a dry brazen scraping sound. “You’re going to die.”
The buzzing in Nat’s chest mounted another notch. “Thank you,” she repeated, almost primly. “For the vote of confidence.” They all found her so fucking funny—nobody dared laugh at her mother, though.
If Nat managed to survive, could she make them shut up? Or maybe she could just get in Baby and… go, avoiding all their impossible little quests, their cryptic pronouncements, their goddamn cackling.
It sounded nice. It sounded, in fact, downright amazing.
“But that’s all right, little Drozdova.” The skin on Georgia’s skinny neck twitched, as if something underneath was shifting. That mass of writhing gray curls moved again, restlessly. One lifted, a questing viper-head. “We all do, sooner or later. At the end, even the Cold Bitch will lay down her burden.”
It didn’t seem possible. “Even you?” She was getting just as weird as the rest of them. Did they just sit around all day having philosophical discussions?
“Especially me, and on that day I’ll probably even be glad about it.” Georgia’s mouth pulled down at the corners, bitterly. She picked up her glass again and finished off its cargo in three long, sucking swallows, smacking her lips at the end. “Here’s the last thing I’m going to tell you: There’s dying, and then there’s dying. That’s it.”
That sounds about as useful as flies on meat, thanks.One of Leo’s sayings, and thinking about him made the buzzing in Nat’s chest worse. She hadn’t eaten since Marisol’s, and now she was downing vodka and about to drive again. Did divinities get DUIs?
Did she need to sober up? Staying here would be a very bad idea, though.
Nat exhaled sharply, clearing her lungs. She lifted the glass, and the remaining vodka, just on the edge of ice-slush despite its alcohol content, filled her mouth before sliding down her esophagus in a muscular wave. A supernova detonated deep inside her, and the buzz-rattle deep in her ribcage was so loud she was almost afraid the other woman would hear it.
When she lowered the glass, sucking in a breath full of desert sage, dry spice, and rasp-scaled heat, tears filled her eyes. Her vision blurred, and for a moment another shape moved behind Georgia. The enormity of that shadow all but choked her.
Because it was familiar, and because she knew what to call the thing coiled inside her own body, its tail held high and buzzing. It had a wedge-shaped head and shining flat eyes; the blurring button-rattle was its final warning.
Striking quick as lighting and driving its fangs deep was what followed.
Georgia’s bony hand flashed out; she subtracted the empty glass from Nat’s nerveless hand. Two long, unpainted fingernails scratched lightly along her granddaughter’s left wrist; the contact burned, though razor pinpricks didn’t break the skin. “You didn’t think I’d let you leave without a gift, did you?” Baba Yaga’s other form—or maybe Yaga was Georgia’s, who knew—gave an arid chuckle. “Now get out of my house, and go do what you’re going to.”
Nat slithered off the stool, her boots hitting tiled floor with twin fang-thumps. She backed away, her right hand clapping over her mouth because the urge to hiss-scream boiled in her middle with the vodka, and once she began she might never stop.
She staggered down the hall, reeled out into bright desert sunshine, and heard a thick slamming sound behind her though there wasn’t a door in the entire dwelling. The cactuses, startled by her reappearance, froze like dancers petrified by a sudden cessation of music, and the black saguaro-monster spat two blue-white sparks from wicked hand-long needles, the brief crackles vanishing in midair.
Nat ran for Baby. The chariot’s engine was already thrumming, eager to be flying again, dying to be gone.
And still the buzzing filled the young Drozdova’s bones; now she knew its name. The twin marks on her wrist throbbed as she spun the steering wheel; Baby’s engine roared.
A few moments later, nothing remained before Georgia’s little round house but churned dust settling with little slithering sounds, and another scarf of dry cackling laughter rose to the innocent, powder-blue sky before ending with a shimmering sibilant sound.
HERE WE ARE
There was a lot to love in Texas, at least as far as Dima was concerned. Every man liked to think himself a cowboy, and in the wide-open they could all pretend to be one. A greasy petrochemical scent on the back of the wind spoke of bubbling oil wells, and where there was crude there was money. Where there was money, there was someone looking to take it all—and there were others looking to subtract it from the grasper.
Plus, the barbeque was tasty, and guns were everywhere. It was a carnival, especially with Christmas lights still blinking even though the commercially blessed nativity had passed. Plenty of rubes were frantically returning gifts they couldn’t afford, not to mention back at suffering their miserable pittance-paid jobs, and no few of them were looking around and thinkingwhy shouldn’t I just grab?
With New Year’s right around the corner, alcohol was lowering every inhibition in preparation, too.
One of his other faces lived in Dallas, but Dima didn’t wander too close to that good ol’ boy. He was after different prey, and the tingling in his hands made his black car scream along the outskirts of Amarillo, circling like a shark before diving. Lubbock’s smog held the faintest tinge of jasmine; he bisected the town going due south, turned east, and so it was that his hunt finally ceased between Grassland and Post on a lonely stretchof 380, pulled far over on the shoulder while the sun sank in a crimson-orange inferno, the metallic drench of irrigation riding a tepid winter-rancid breeze and dust tickling his nose.
Rubes zoomed past in pickup trucks and SUVs, sedans and hatchbacks. Some bore faint traces of delicious wickedness or bright tasty fear—one even the nasty-yellow cloud of murder deeply contemplated or freshly achieved—but Dima ignored their blandishments and temptations, leaning on the black car’s trunk and smoking cigarette after cigarette, squinting into the western distance.
Heatshimmer melded with sunset, and in the last dying glow of the day a blue car shaped very much like a ’68 Mustang slowed, headlights sharp with feline interest.
At least hiszaikadidn’t just zoom past, disdaining his invitation. She pulled onto the shoulder as well, the dusty plume behind her car catching sunset in a net of gold, and the engine’s deep throb was almost as pleasant as his own vehicle’s.
Dima didn’t move. He stood and smoked, leaning nice and easy.
Waiting.
Between the glare of the sun’s nightly Liebestod and the blue chariot’s headlights, the driver was an indistinct shadow. The engine’s idle didn’t halt when the door opened and she emerged—of course, the chariot would be unhappy with its mistress at a roadside parley with one ofhiskind.
