Page 88 of Snake-Eater
Like most people, Selena had had moments, right on the edge of sleep, when she suddenly jerked awake. The javelina spirit’s push felt a little like that. She was falling, falling, falling—and then it felt as if her entiresoultwitched and she was wide awake and standing in a jumble of broken boulders at the bottom of Jackrabbit Hole.
The boulders were much larger than they had looked from the top of the slope. The shortest was still higher than her head, the color of bone in the moonlight. The very largest leaned together, making a rough cave that sheltered a depression which must fill with water from time to time, but which had dried up, leaving only white rings behind. She recognized that cave, and those stones, because she had seen them sketched in her aunt’s journals.
Dark marks scored the face of the stones, but Selena did not have time to work out if they were natural or man-made, becausethe first thing she saw was Snake-Eater and the second thing was Grandma Billy.
“Grandma!”
The old woman sat slumped against the largest stone, clearly holding herself upright by will alone. There was blood and dirt on her face and her breath rattled in her chest.
“Selena,” she said, her voice low and raspy. “Don’t you worry, hon. I’ll be up in just a minute.”
“She will not,” said Snake-Eater inside Selena’s head. “Your miserable little gods may have trapped me here, but you will not get away.”
The bird spirit had clearly come off badly in the fight. He was no longer a pillar of clawed and sharp-edged shadows, but a shifting, stunted thing with a shape that barely seemed able to hold together. A bristling crest melted into raw-looking skin and golden eyes turned first human, then reptilian, pupils narrowing into slits. But the monstrous beak was still there, sharp as a sword, and when he began to advance, it was like watching a dinosaur come to life. The back of Selena’s brain screamed that she was only a tiny skulking mammal and this ancient beast was coming to devour her.
If Snake-Eater had still had a roadrunner’s terrifying quickness, he would have caught her at once and that would have been the end of it. But he moved slowly, clawed feet scraping up furrows of dust, and Selena retreated and then Copper, who was valiant and ridiculous and probably thought that she had defeated this monster all by herself, bounded forward and sank her teeth into the bird-beast’s leg.
Snake-Eater roared and kicked out hard, lifting the dog off the ground. Copper was flung away, and struck a boulder with a yelp. Snake-Eater lifted a clawed foot to disembowel his attacker.
“No!”
Selena, who generally ran away from everything, rantowardSnake-Eater, yelling. She didn’t know what she said, but apparently itwas enough. The bird-beast’s head swung around and focused on her instead of Copper. He struck out at her and Selena jerked back and felt a puff of wind across her cheek as a beak like an axe blade passed mere inches in front of her face.
If that hit me,she thought, as if from very far away,it would tear me in half.
But before Snake-Eater could come at her again, she heard a clatter of hooves and a javelina the size of a man struck Snake-Eater low to the ground and bowled him off his feet.
Snake-Eater shrieked. Claws raked the javelina’s sides and Father Aguirre squealed furiously. Selena ignored them both and ran to Copper’s side.
The dog was trying to get to her feet but something was wrong with one hind leg. Selena tried to get down on one knee beside her, but there was something digging into her arm.
She looked down and realized that somehow, in this world, she was still clutching Grandma Billy’s shotgun.
Good thing I didn’t fall on it,she thought absently.It might have gone off and hit someone. That’s why I don’t like guns.
Guns.
I have a gun.
Everything seemed to be moving very slowly. As if in a dream, she heard herself saying,But I don’t want to shoot anyone,and Grandma Billy answering,What about if something came after Copper?
Grandma Billy had been going to shoot Snake-Eater. Grandma Billy was in no shape to do that, but Selena was.
She lifted the shotgun, made sure both halves fit back together, and took aim. It seemed to take centuries. She saw Snake-Eater getting unsteadily to his feet and the javelina shake himself off. “Father Aguirre,” she said, very calmly, “you need to get down.”
Her voice sounded quiet in her own ears, but somehow the javelina heard her and flung himself down. His legs were so short that this didn’tactually do much, but then he fell over on his side and Selena lifted the shotgun.
In her head, she tried out saying, “Meep meep, motherfucker,” and possibly that would be amazing and possibly it would be incredibly silly and since she couldn’t decide, she said nothing at all and pulled the trigger instead.
Chapter 20
“See?” Grandma Billy said. She had revived enormously after draining most of a canteen of water. “Told you shooting the bastard would work.”
Father Aguirre, attempting to arrange what was left of his clothes so that they provided basic modesty, said, “Yes, you did. I should not have doubted you.”
Snake-Eater had been reduced to scattered feathers and gobbets of something dark and oily, which was already sinking into the sand and vanishing. There was much less than Selena would have expected from the sheer size of Snake-Eater’s body. Perhaps he had made himself look bigger somehow, expanding a roadrunner skin in the same way that the fetches had with barn owls’.
“Is he dead?” Selena asked.
