Page 62 of Badlands (Nora Kelly #5)

N ORA WATCHED, TRANSFIXED.

Something had begun to emerge from what was left of Nash’s body, in a series of spastic, organic contractions, almost as if the burnt corpse were giving birth.

Wreathed in smoke, it slowly squeezed out of its womb of charred bone and meat.

The shapeless thing that emerged cried out again: not the muffled, guttural sound Nora had heard before, but a soul-chilling shriek so loud and full of triumph that she felt the pinpricks of faintness come over her.

In the roiling smoke, she saw two dark spots form, resolving into slitted lizard eyes.

Soon the manifestation of a face formed—with a black mouth, which began to move, opening and closing like a fish’s, and then a body, appearing and disappearing in the whirling smoke and fire.

Then, abruptly, clouds of smoke billowed out on either side of the thing and began to form into a pair of wrinkled wings.

Nora watched as the creature flexed them—slowly at first, as if testing—before starting to unfold them.

Instead of feathers, tongues of dark fire flickered over the skeletal body, never fully visible, obscured by whorls of smoke that revealed glimpses of grotesque body parts quickly cloaked again.

Now the smoke-creature moved its wings, fully unfurling them so that they seemed to cover half the night sky.

Its head formed: the mouth morphed into an eagle’s beak, and it gazed down with snake’s eyes upon the beings below it, the head moving jerkily this way and that, like a bird of prey’s.

Nora stared at this summoned thing, wreathed in appalling black flame, slowly fanning its skeletal wings.

It seemed to be waiting, looking down at the puny creatures that had summoned it—waiting for purpose.

Her paralysis at the sight vanished when the smoke-creature opened its monstrous beak and let out another unholy shriek—and then she remembered her plan.

Bromley and the rest remained transfixed, staring upward, their faces slack.

They had the look of children who, having tossed a lit match into a lake of gasoline, were witnessing a terrifying conflagration of their own making.

Tearing her gaze away from the creature, Nora put Nash’s flute to her lips and blew a note, and another.

She closed her eyes to shut out the horrific sight, but especially to recall the ancient melody from the wax cylinder that she had played with Skip.

It was in a pentatonic scale, but with added quarter and half tones, which she had earlier learned how to make by half covering the holes with her fingers.

Eyes still squeezed shut, but confident now, she raised the flute skyward and unleashed the thousand-year-old melody, the song to repel skinwalkers.

The melody swelled as she gained confidence: louder, faster, the notes rising cleanly above the snarl of wind and fire.

It had an instantaneous effect.

With an unearthly screech, the apparition began beating its skeletal wings, stirring the pyre below.

It flared up with a crackling hiss, spewing vast showers of sparks into the wind.

The blackened corpse swung and twirled madly on the tripod, as if assaulted by some demonic wind, before coming apart, bones and burnt flesh scattering.

“No!” screamed Bromley, shaken out of his own paralysis.

She continued to play, faster and louder, even as the skeletal thing thrashed amidst the fire, its shrieks and bellows mingling with the melody.

Bromley dashed at her in a frenzy.

Nora yanked the obsidian knife from her belt and lunged toward him, arm extended, bracing herself.

In his mad rush, Bromley ran himself directly onto the knife.

He grunted, his mask jarred off by the impact.

He stepped back as she pulled the knife out, and he stared down at the blood gushing from his solar plexus.

Staggering backward, he fell to his knees among the other cultists, who could only, zombie-like, gape at the events as they played out.

She felt the unholy wings beating up a swirl of sparks around her, spreading smoke that surged over the mesa top.

As if from far away, she could hear Corrie shouting something, but then the smoke-creature gave another screech that sounded…

almost triumphant.

With a terrific effort, Bromley rose back to his feet and now, at last, pulled the Raging Judge from the strap around his waist. Legs spread, bracing and swaying, he tried to raise it toward her with shaking hands.

Nora resumed playing, using all the breath she could muster.

Once again the creature reacted violently, drawing up into itself fire, sparks, and embers until its form disappeared in a maelstrom of fire and smoke.

A great tongue of fiery smoke engulfed Bromley even as he leveled and aimed the shot.

He vanished in the smoke.

The gun never went off.

Moments later, the smoke drew back, revealing Bromley once more, staggering backward.

He flung down the gun, making a keening sound and grasping his head in both hands, spinning around as if in terrible pain.

“Xuctúhla!” he gasped.

“Xuctúhla!”

The living smoke coiled around him again, caressing him with its tendrils.

He opened his mouth in a soundless scream, and the tongue of smoke seemed now to enter into him, take possession of his body.

His head snapped backward, his eyes rolled, and he took a spasmodic step, and another, with movements like a marionette’s, twitching and jerking his way toward the edge of the cliff.

At the same time, he started crying out something above the roar of the wind and flames.

It was incomprehensible at first, but then Nora began to make out individual words: “ Day of days… gift of transformation… Xuctúhla… through the portal of smoke… the black path to the higher plane .”

Now the smoke spread outward, forked with livid lightning, and flowed around the nearby cultists like a gray fluid.

To Nora’s astonishment they took up the refrain, hesitatingly at first, and then louder.

They fell into place behind Bromley, chanting: “ Our gift of transformation… through the portal of smoke to the higher plane… ” Their chaotic movement gradually became coordinated as they surged toward the edge of the cliff, led by Bromley.

“ Through the portal of smoke… follow, follow…, ” Bromley chanted.

Beneath his tone of command, and the chanting of the cultists, Nora was certain she heard another voice, deeper and older, felt rather than heard, repeating the same refrain.

Bromley took a final step forward, teetered at the edge of the cliff, then keeled off and disappeared.

The others hesitated, but only for a moment; one went, then another, and in a few moments the rest followed, surging over the cliff’s edge and vanishing, followed by the sounds of crashing and tumbling, grunts, and thuddings, as the cultists plummeted to their deaths, impacting the rocks below.

The last thing she heard was the deep voice, still intoning…

until, with a dry, malevolent laugh like the skittering of leaves, it faded away.

All that remained was a slow eddy of smoke that was soon whisked away by the wind.

Leaving nothing behind but a heap of glowing coals.