Following the bald guy's hand-drawn route, Rai drove to the area near the Grimley "haunted house."
There was no road beyond that point.
Rai waved the three young witches along, and they followed the rotting signposts into the thick woods.
15 minutes later, a run-down shack appeared.
"This is the famous Grimley Haunted House? The gator-man stooped to live here?" Madison fanned herself and laughed.
Zoe and Queenie looked a little let down. What they saw was a far cry from what they'd imagined.
"No wonder the tourism here never took off," Rai said.
Since they were already there, he pushed the door open anyway.
A cloud of bats exploded awake and shot out of the shack straight at him.
Rai stepped aside.
For the following few seconds, a large number of bats exited the building rapidly, creating a cloud of smoke. The three girls behind Rai let out a yell and ran back.
When things finally calmed down, Rai called them over and shrugged. "Guess that's part of the haunted-house experience."
"Sure… I guess," Zoe said, the only one willing to humour him.
"Let's go in. The bats should be gone."
Rai stepped inside first.
It was dim and grey. Smashed, grimy furniture. Plates with a finger of dust on them. Jerky has gone black and stiff. Bat droppings everywhere, cobwebs over everything.
Nothing special. Just a long-abandoned hut. Not a trace of the so-called gator-man.
They were back outside in short order.
No one was all that disappointed; none of them had really expected anything real here. What cheered them up was finding an intact boat down on the marsh edge.
Obviously not something Grimley had left behind.
Thinking it belonged to someone in the area, the four didn't hesitate. Following their original plan for the trip, they got in, grabbed their paddles, and drifted into the swamp.
Unlike the tour-company routes, this unmarked, undeveloped stretch let them feel the marsh's real atmosphere.
Before long, Madison spotted what she'd been itching to see. "Gator."
Rai followed her finger and saw half a gator's head floating, only eyes, ears, and nostrils above water, angled toward their little boat of intruders.
"Should we haul it up and play with it?" Madison said, eager.
Gators are a no-go for normal people. For a witch like Madison, they were toys at a gesture.
"No," Zoe said quickly. "I'm not sinking this boat."
It was already at its limit carrying the four of them.
Add a gator and they'd be swimming.
"I can't swim," Queenie said, and shot it down on the spot.
Madison had to let it go.
Rai's solid physique made paddling easy, and he pushed them deeper and deeper into the green.
What's dangerous for others, they could usually handle, so they played it as they pleased.
They did not see, beneath a mat of weed not far off, a gator head rising, much larger than the one before. A pair of bloodthirsty beast eyes watched that patch of laughter in cold silence.
…
By dusk, they were back. After a long day on the water with no incidents, they drove until they found a good spot and set up camp.
If you travel the wilds, you do not go home at night.
When it came to tents, Zoe, Madison, and even Queenie were more practised than Rai. He kept out of the way and opened the Chevy's trunk, pulled a parang, hacked down the tall grass around the site, and chopped firewood.
A big, heavy, kukri knife like that is perfect for green wood.
He had found it in the academy's storeroom the day before and had no idea which predecessor bought it for camping or for chopping people. Waste not, want not; he brought it along.
By the time he came back with an armful of wood, three tents were up. One for Queenie, one for Madison, and one for him and Zoe. Reasonable enough.
Madison had considered sabotaging one tent so she could "happen" to join Rai and Zoe's two-person space. Then she pictured ending up stuck with Queenie's bulk and the freight-train snoring and thought better of it.
Still, with a setting this nice, she hated the idea of leaving no "trace" at all, the way they had during the three-day road trip.
Her eyes lit.
…
Night fell.
Under Madison's gaze, flame bloomed on the woodpile and threw warm light over the camp.
Zoe watched it catch and couldn't help the envy. "How'd you do that?"
"Talent," Madison said, chin high. "Every witch is born with one or several gifts. With time, or a good jolt to the emotions, the power buried in your blood wakes up."
"Like when you nearly got taken out by that ghost and almost peed yourself, and then bam, pyrokinesis," Queenie said, right on target.
"Not just that," Madison said. Her brows arched, and she glanced at Queenie.
Queenie, chewing, paused. She turned and held her snacks out to Madison of her own accord.
Madison let a smug smile curl, then eyed the greasy, plump hand and politely refused. "Thanks. You keep it."
She withdrew her gaze.
Queenie blinked clear and stared. "Shit. What was that?"
Zoe was just as shocked. She would never have believed Queenie would offer Madison food.
"Mind Control. Fiona taught me once, and I picked it up," Madison said coolly, and took a fresh wing Rai had just roasted.
"You learned another ability?" Zoe's face flickered through shock, envy, and longing. "Can you teach me how to do it?"
She could not stand another moment of being useless if her boyfriend was in danger.
"No problem," Madison said, generously.
Seeing Zoe's bright eyes and Queenie, who looked a bit annoyed, but who was still listening, Madison smiled, got a case of beer, patted it, and said, "Let's drink and talk."
Late at night.
The crackle of the campfire, the clink of bottles, the swallow of beer, laughter, and the chorus of insects and birds wove the perfect camping scene.
They had said they were going to talk witchcraft, but as the drinks went down, everyone, Zoe included, slipped out of "good student" mode and into vacation.
The case of beer was visibly shrinking.
Zoe and Queenie were glassy-eyed.
Madison, the main engine, was fine. For a habitual drinker like her, this much only flushed her cheeks.
Her eyes burned as she looked at Rai.
Rai rarely drank, but with a Physique of 1.5, he stayed clear.
Which suited Madison just fine.
She cut a look at Zoe and Queenie, about to urge them to keep going, when Queenie suddenly stood. "Bathroom."
She wobbled off into the dark.
Rai glanced her way, then at Zoe, whose head had come to rest on his shoulder. He was about to call it a night when something soft and warm pressed against his back, breath sweet with alcohol whispering in his ear.
"Right here is pretty good, too."
Wow. Playing it this wild?
He did not need to guess who it was. Old pro was old pro.
He was about to refuse in righteous tones when his ears twitched.
A beat later, he stiffened and turned toward the treeline beyond the firelight.
"What is it?" Madison asked, her rose-polished fingers already dividing forces for a pincer movement. Rai caught her hands.
"Wait. Something's off out there."
His better-than-average body gave him better-than-average hearing. For a split second, he had heard another footfall in a different direction from where Queenie had gone.
He had first figured it for a small animal. Then he noticed what was wrong.
Too quiet.
A moment ago, the forest had been rustling and chittering. Now it was eerily still.
Animals are sensitive. Silence like that meant something had arrived that they feared.
Rai gave Madison's hands a firm squeeze.
Her gaze snapped clear.
With the battlefield rapport they'd built fighting ghosts, she casually scanned the dark and murmured, "We got trouble?"
Rai nodded. "Got a way to sober her up?"
Whether or not there was danger, Zoe needed to be lucid.
"Sobering pill. Hollywood must-have," Madison said. She grabbed her bag, fished out a tiny pillbox, popped a tablet, and used Mind Control to make Zoe swallow it.
It kicked in fast.
Zoe rubbed her temple and lifted her head off Rai's shoulder. "What happened to me?"
Rai quietly brought her up to speed.
Zoe jolted, but with her boyfriend steady and Madison composed beside her, she forced herself to be calm.
Rai did not waste time.
He cast a worried glance toward the direction Queenie had gone, where nothing had moved for a while. Then, before the night could get any older, he raised his voice.
"Come on out. I already see you."
Ten seconds. Thirty. A minute.
The dark treeline yawned like a waiting maw. Nothing.
He kept at it. "Your footsteps gave you away. Come out. My friends and I don't like this kind of prank."
"Come have a drink. These ladies could use another gentleman."
Crunch.
The moment he finished, unmistakable footsteps sounded. Whether he'd spooked them or the invitation worked, a shadow stepped out of the trees.
"Been gators around here at night lately, attacking folks. I'm on patrol for this stretch. Hope I didn't disturb you. Heard there was liquor and pretty girls out here. Which lady's gonna pour one for a man doing his job?"
The voice tickled Madison's memory. She looked up. It was the horse-faced guy from the station earlier.
He had on brush-proof gear and carried a shotgun. He looked the part of a patroller.
If you ignored the greedy way his eyes crawled over Madison and, with fresh delight, the clean, new face of Zoe.
This batch is perfect, he was thinking. The god only needs breeders. Once they've done their job, I'll take my cut…
"Just you?" Rai asked.
"Course not…"
He caught himself and shut his mouth. His grip tightened on the shotgun. He started to turn toward Rai.
Bang!
The shot wasn't his. It was Rai's Glock.
Thud.
He hit the dirt. Even as his eyes closed, he couldn't understand why Rai had fired so suddenly. How could he? How dare he?
Rai dared.
He wasn't one of those IQ-dropped horror-movie teens. Who patrols a swamp this late at night, really? If the work ethic here were that hardcore, he'd be the first not to buy it. And for the record, gators do most of their hunting by day, not night.
Midnight lurking, armed, leering, lying stacked together, it was more than enough reason to shoot.
As for the chance he'd killed the wrong guy?
Then he'd killed the wrong guy. Consider it a small contribution to easing Earth's population.
Without a speck of guilt, Rai put the horse-faced man down, swept his hand, and snuffed the campfire. The campsite went black.
A short time later.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Gunfire tore the clearing, splinters spitting where the fire had been.
"Damn it, we're burned!"
"Vincent, that idiot. Couldn't even catch them. Useless!"
"After them!"
"Don't shoot. We need the women alive!"
"Go, go, go!"
Torches flared. Faces of men and women, young and old, poured from the dark, fanatic and loud, chanting in unison.
"Blood is blood!"
"Blood is blood!"
"Blood is blood!"
The moment Rai killed horse-face guy, he knew the man hadn't come alone. He snuffed the fire first thing, grabbed Zoe and Madison, and used the cover of dark to sprint the way Queenie had gone. No way was he leaving her out there alone.
Behind them, the rest stopped hiding. Torches flared. Guns came up. A mob pounded after them, chanting something that made the skin crawl.
"Just our luck. We ran straight into a cult's nest."
Rai glanced back and spotted the bald station keeper and Old John among them. Figures.
He'd heard all about how, on this land of freedom, the varieties of cults were endless. In his head, though, they were more like pyramid schemes scamming grandparents like East's garden-variety money cults.
From the looks of it, they wanted to use them for a live sacrifice.
Madison stayed cool. Maybe she'd seen too many boutique faiths in Hollyweird; fame-fried, cash-rich, empty-headed stars were easy to fleece.
She even had room to tease Zoe. "Zoe, now's your awakening moment. Rai needs your protection."
Zoe actually seemed up for it. Startled that his "girlfriend" was that bold, Rai pulled her back and shot Madison a look. "You trying to die? They've got dozens of guns. You think you're bulletproof?"
Witches are flesh and blood. One bullet still drops you. If it were otherwise, witches would rule the world, not hide from it.
And however strong Madison was now, she wasn't mowing down dozens at once. Rai, not yet superhero tier, wasn't either.
So they ran first. Find Queenie, open distance, make the pack scatter, then turn and break them.
He had no intention of running forever. He'd just paid twenty grand for that car and barely driven it.