Chapter 5#2

"'Cause you know me so well." Abbie forced half a smile. "I was able to see everyone in the Tribe who should be on the Res, but Cheveyo and Momma Maybelle. For some reason, I couldn't even sense them. There was a hole where they should've been–their places in my Mind's Eye, in my heart, and in my soul. It's just empty. Then, when I used the bond I shared with only them, it was dark and solitary, just not… Well, it just wasn't there. It's like we somehow got unplugged from one another, and I couldn't find the outlet or the cord."

“Go,” the blond insisted. “You gotta find them if we’re gonna get to the bottom of all of this and help everyone. I’ll see what I can do to ease Auggie's pain. I've done quite a bit of training with the Elemental Healers at the Citadel. I might not be able to completely rid her of this infection because it's rotten to the core, but I'm pretty sure I can help."

“Go for it! I appreciate anything you can do.”

With no time to spare and not wanting to run because it was her least favorite activity in the whole wide world any longer, Abbie flashed to the two-story red brick house with a wraparound porch, white sills, and black shutters sitting atop Sequoyah Hill. It was and always had been Cheveyo’s home. Appearing out of the Ether with her feet on the steps to the entrance of the house, she stood perfectly still.

Something was really, really wrong. The front door was standing wide open. Sure, it was common knowledge that the Chief never locked his door, but he never left it open either. If there was one thing a person could count on in Texas, especially the Chihuahuan Desert, it was critters of the buggy, pinchy, and basically yucky variety outnumbering everything else a hundred to one. That was why pretty much every house had screens, and no one left doors or windows open if they could help it.

With one foot over the threshold, she yelled, even though she was certain there was no one there. “Hey, Cheveyo! It’s Abigail. You here?”

Waiting for precisely one heartbeat, she pushed her Enchantment in every direction within the walls of the home just to double-check that it was indeed empty. When she was sure she was alone, Abbie went through the dining room and kitchen and then out the backdoor. The minute the warm, dry breeze hit her cheeks she flashed to Momma Maybelle's cottage on the opposite side of the Res.

Atop Raintree Hill sat the one-story ranch-style cottage. Bright white with red shutters and a white picket fence, there was every flower, herb, and medicinal plane ever known to man and a few no one had ever heard of and never would. A familiar and welcoming creak filled the air as the wind blew the antique rocking chairs back and forth on the perfectly appointed porch. Momma Maybelle called it her little slice of Heaven, and Abbie agreed.

But on this occasion, things were very different. Something had soiled the safest place on the Res and pissed Abbie off as nothing ever had.

Once again, no one was home. Once again, she Magically checked every nook and cranny. Then, when she was about to leave through the side door, her gaze lit upon three tiny words scratched in the white baseboard behind the kitchen door: Find your Uktena.

“How did she…?” Shaking her head as she turned to leave, Abbie answered with a forced snicker, “Because she’s Momma Maybelle.”

"And because she is the oldest and wisest Medicine Woman to ever live. That’s why she is the one and only Elder of the Wisdom as appointed by the Great Creator,” Faye added. “That’s how she knew you would be the one coming to find her, and you would know to look for any clues she might have left behind. After all, she is also the Keeper of the Eternal Lunar Light and the great-grandmother to the renowned Cherokee Chief John Ross. She can damn near do anything. "

“Still freaks me out sometimes.”

Flashing back to Auggie's house, she was glad to see a tiny bit of color returning to her cousin's face. Whatever Sydney was doing was working, and that was the best news she could have gotten.

Sitting in the chair next to the bed, Abbie held her cousin’s hand and mentally asked Sydney, “Has her temperature come down at all? It still feels like she’s on fire.”

Before the blond could answer, Auggie groaned through gritted teeth, “Don’t talk about me like I’m not here. I can still whoop your butt if I need to.”

“Okay, Tiger, I know you’re tough.”

“Damn straight.” Wheezing then gasping, Auggie coughed and hacked, the sound gut-wrenching and heartbreaking.

Grabbing a cool, wet cloth to wipe her cousin’s forehead, Abbie hoped it would lower her temperature even a degree. Just barely opening her eyes, Auggie whispered, “No, my fever has not come down, and if you think I feel hot to the touch, you oughta be in here.”

Snorting a chuckle despite the worry beating at her soul, Abbie joked, “You always were the hot one.”

"Says the girl with flaming red c-c-." But that was as far as Auggie got before she again coughed and hacked, then gagged. Convulsing every time her lungs forcefully expelled air, Abbie just barely kept her cousin from rolling off the bed. Harder and harder, she coughed until bloody phlegm flew from her lips, decorating everything in its path in bright red and green splatters.

With her lips turning blue and only the whites of her eyes showing, Auggie coughed and barked until there was nothing left. Collapsing onto the bed, unconscious and once again struggling to breathe, she was so frail, so incredibly pale, that Abbie feared the worst.

“Dammit!” Syd spat, jumping to her feet and pacing the floor. “I thought it was working. I did everything I could. I spoke to Bane, and he told me what he knew, promising he’d get here as soon as he could.”

Wringing her hands and pacing from one end of the room to the other, she continued, "Then I called Dian, the Oracle Physician, the one with the ability to tap into the Primordial Healing Magic of the Earthly Realm to help Earthly bound Healers restore others." Waving at the air as if she were erasing a chalkboard, she hurried on, "Sorry. What she is and what she does is of no consequence. What is important is that I did exactly what she told me to do. I followed all the steps, said all the right words, and pulled from the Magic of the Earth.” Stopping midstride, she turned, motioned with both hands toward the woman in bed, and kept right on going, “And Auggie was getting better. You saw it. She was really gettin’ better. So, what happened? Why is she…?”

The pounding of thundering hooves filled Abbie's consciousness. It was all she could hear. It demanded her attention. It refused to be ignored. It was even louder than the 'little voice.' Her heart even beat in the same rhythm. Vision blurring and ears ringing, sounds of something large and vindictive coming straight for her grew louder with every passing second.

Trying to focus on Sydney, to hear what she was saying, to see more than a billowy shadow through the thick, black fog filtering in from every direction, Abbie opened her mouth to speak only to have the words blown back in her face. She tried to step in front of the blond, but her feet wouldn't move. Finally, she did the only thing she could think of–she raised her hands over her head, waved them all around, and jumped up and down.

Still nothing.

The conclusion she reached, the solitary thing that made any sense at all, was that she was the only one who could see and hear the signs of impending doom, and she was getting her first glimpse at what it would be like to be invisible–and that shit would not stand. She had to try to make Sydney see what was happening. There had to be a way. She couldn't stand idly by and let her friend, her cousin, or anyone else get hurt.

Trying a move that had won the Girls' Basketball Finals in her senior year in high school, Abbie leaned one way, then stepped the other, then tried with all her might to zig-zag through the intertwining, hazy plumes. As soon as she'd made the littlest bit of headway, she shoved her arms through the wall of fog and reached for Sydney. Sadly, she pulled back a handful of rotten flesh and dead vines from the grape arbors around the Res.

Again and again, she tried, and every time the same thing happened. Sydney continued to pace and explain how she was trying to help Auggie, and Auggie lay there struggling to breathe. It was time to call out the big guns.

Turning her Second Sight inward, she fought through the haze with a single-minded determination, refusing to be thwarted. Pouring all the Magic, N?nn?’h?, Timber She-Wolf, and Healing Enchantment she’d inherited from her dad’s dad, Papa Dayfedd, a Celtic Shaman she could summon, Abbie pulled an ancient Cherokee War Club from the Ether and started beating away at the wall of mist and muck before her.

Her muscles were on fire. She thought her arms might actually fall off, but she refused to give up. Punching through the pea soup hanging in the air all around her, she shouted with all her might for Sydney to pay attention and realize what was happening.

Nothing worked. Still, the thundering hooves grew closer and closer. Still, every sense she possessed was screaming for her to fight. Still, the 'little voice' demanded she pay attention to what it was trying to say.

Faye growled, “Never give up, Isi. Fight! Fight hard! You must get to the other side. You must destroy whoever or whatever is causing this disruption to the fabric of the Earth.”

“You can do this,” the voice of the Ditlihi commanded. “As you are Abigail Addams, you are more than the Great Creator's Chosen Warrior. You are a Warrior of Light. You are Beloved. You are the Hope. Do what you were meant to do.”

Tucking the shaft of the elaborately hand-carved War Club under her arm, she choked up on the shank with her right hand. Reaching across her body with her left, she hooked her pinky finger on the edge of the socket, pointing the heavy ball-shaped head with spikes made of bone, stone, and metal at the threat barreling toward her, and spread her feet shoulder-width apart.

With a slight bend of her knees, she pulled every ounce of power and strength she had into her core and inhaled deeply. Holding her breath, counting every strike of hooves against the ground, she exhaled slowly.

Shadows, long and dark, shimmered through the thick, dense fog. At first, they looked like long, gnarled fingers reaching out for her, beckoning her to trust when her every instinct told her to do the exact opposite.

Floating in the mist, they twisted and turned, bending and buckling into a broken outline, a dotted line that made no sense at all. It was no form she recognized. It was disjointed and malformed, appearing as random pieces of a jigsaw with no end, no beginning, no middle, and absolutely no hope of ever fitting together.

The longer she stood at the ready, the darker the scattered bits grew. They gained substance. They took the shape of something far scarier than anything she could have dreamed of in any nightmare.

The shadowy figure appeared to be upwards of thirteen feet tall. She only knew that because she'd helped Auggie remodel her house, and those ceilings had been a bitch to paint. Coming in at fourteen feet, they were some of the tallest in the Res, and Abbie, one the shortest, had been nominated to stand on the ladder and man the roller. It was something she wouldn't soon forget.

Watching as the sharp, pointed tip of the triangular blade of an incredibly ornate Ceremonial Tomahawk raised high left a glaring crevice where it scraped the ceiling, she thought about yelling, “Hey, Asshole! You gonna repaint that?”

But then her eyes followed the straight wooden handle that led to the rider’s left hand and couldn’t stop as she took in the twisted and curvy line of the blood-stained, skeletal arm disappearing into the thick black cloak of the creature riding the most grotesque horse she’d ever seen, and words failed her. Unable to stop her gaze from wandering, no matter how hard she tried and how much she didn't want to see anymore, she locked eyes with what had to have been a horse at one point in time, and her stomach turned.

Crimson eyes, the color of fresh-spilled blood with the Fires of Hell burning in their soulless depths, told the story of an unending torment that was far worse than any of the stories she’d been told. Bits of putrid flesh and foul gore hung from the tips of the huge, uneven fangs left bare by the lack of flesh and fur .

Legends of the Skeletal Horse were told by harsh parents to warn naughty children to mind their Elders and eat their vegetables. For the adults, Deid Cuddie –the Dead Horse–was more than a myth. It was the foretelling of the coming of the End of Days. It was the creature they'd been taught about from the Celtic Dragons, who they'd welcomed onto their land and into their Reservation. It was the Beast of Burden she'd heard about all of her life…

But what galloped toward her was far worse than anything her grannies, Auntie, uncles, grandpas, and even the Chiefs and Elders of her Tribe had described. What was barreling at an unnatural speed in her direction could only be powered by Black Magic at the hands of an Incredible Evil, and it scared the crap out of her.

Nineteen hands high at the tip of its withers, for the most part, the Deid Cuddie was nothing but bones. It pretty much looked like the creature from her imagination, but that's where the similarity ended. Everything was made so much worse by the ragged pieces of fetid flesh, moldy strings of what had to have been muscles and connective tissue and globules of rancid blood hanging from every crack, notch, and rounded growth–especially each and every joint that it had.

“That horse is fuckin’… fuckin’…. It has fuckin’ fangs. Nobody ever said the horse had fangs. Why didn’t they tell me?” The words, her words, floated through her mind to Faye's and the Ditlihi's just as her eyes met the rider's, and her blood ran cold.

Black as night, they were so dark they were the epitome of nothingness. More than soulless, they were vacuous with a pull that reached into the depths of Abbie's very essence, latched their vicious claws into the pulp of her existence, and tried with aberrant strength to absorb her very life .

Gaunt, almost skeletal, the rider’s face had more form than Deid Cuddie with transparent, wafer-thin skin showcasing the black and purple veins slithering and writing as they pumped the viscous fluid that kept the rider upright. There was no nose, or it was hidden in the shadows cast by the hood. Abbie couldn't tell. And honestly, didn't want to know. All she knew for sure was that whatever was sitting atop the Dead Horse made her skin crawl.

Then it happened. The rider realized she was there. Their eyes locked. The rider's head snapped to the left and then whipped back to the right.

What was it looking for? Was it getting the lay of the land? Was it surveying the torment it was inflicting upon the Tribe? And who the hell was the rider? She'd never heard a story in which Deid Cuddie had a rider.

Tired of waiting, sick of the anticipation, needing to do something–anything–she yelled, “Who the fuck are…?”

Swinging back to the front, the rider's jaw dropped to its chest, its head fell backward, and the air filled with an unearthly shriek that made the hair all over Abbie's body stand on end. As quickly as it started, the sound stopped, but the echo continued.

Head popping back up, the sound of cracking bones replaced the screech as the rider’s hood slid backward. Abject horror and total disbelief had Abbie’s hands tightening around the handle of the War Club as she gasped , “No fuckin’ way!”

“Your eyes do not deceive you, Isi,” Faye confirmed. “The rider is female. She is…”

“Uya,” Abbie, the Timber She-Wolf, and the Ditlihi snarled.

A plethora of emotions, too many to count or identify, washed over, around, and through her. Callous, cold, and cruel, the rider was indeed the Uya–the evil Earth Spirit who opposed everything good and right in the world. If the Deid Cuddie was the stuff of childhood nightmares, then the Uya was every person’s worst fear, deepest dread, and what could literally keep them up at night, all rolled into one.

Within the Uya, there was no spark of Life or Light. There wasn't even Darkness. There was quite literally nothing.

She did not feel. She did not want to. She did not think, at least not as any living being would understand those things. The Uya only acted on the instinct given to her at the time of her inception–which was always by a twist of Black Magic and a demented Practitioner of the Dark Arts.

No one knew who created the Uya, only that she existed to rob the world of Light in all its many forms. She was a Destroyer who did her job with extreme prejudice, accepting nothing but the complete annihilation of anything just, right, or good that stood in her way.

She acted upon a person’s worst fears. She projected what she wanted her victims to feel to make them weak, to control them, and then she took them to the brink of madness. Once there, she feasted on the delusion, the delirium, and the hysteria until there was nothing left but an empty husk.

Everything within the Uya was feral, insensitive, and subhuman. Her unquenchable desire to consume, warp, and defile everything in her path was incomprehensible for any living being to understand. Or so Abbie thought until that very moment. In a split second, she'd looked into the Uya's soulless eyes. She knew everything she needed to know–the Uya had to go, and she had to be the one to do it.

“It’s why I am here.” The words floated from her mind to Faye and the Ditlihi .

With every shield, mental block, and shred of protection she had, Abbie refused to back down. There could be no weakness. That was what the Uya wanted. She needed a place to plant the seed of her malice, cruelty, and spite into Abbie. She wanted to fill her up with anything and everything that would erase even the smallest shred of decency and goodness she possessed. She wanted the Spirit of the N?nn?'hi and everything it represented. She wanted to warp the beautifully perfect loving and healing Nature of the People Who Would Live Forever and kill it. She wanted to turn Abbie into a tool, a weapon that could be turned on the world.

Quite simply, the Uya wanted to kill Hope.

“Focus, Abigail,” the voice of the Ditlihi commanded, "Concentrate on the Light. Find your center. Hold your ground. Then, when you are ready, take in the rest of the Uya.”

“But I…”

“I know you don’t want to see it–to see her–but you must. For to defeat your enemy, you must know your enemy. To destroy the Darkness, you must know where to shine the Light.”

Feeling the infusion of Ancient Indigenous Magic and the Love and Kinship of the Ancient Cherokee, Abbie pictured her mom and dad. She thought about the stories she’d heard. She remembered what the Ditlihi had told her about the night of the Clash at Guadalupe Peak and how bravely they'd given all they had–even their very lives–to do the right thing, to save the people they loved and, most of all, to give their only daughter the best chance at life.

“This one’s for you, Agitsi and Agidoda,” she whispered, speaking mother and father in the Cherokee language. "I just hope I can be as brave as you were."

Forcing her eyes upward, she refused to gasp. She would not give the Uya the satisfaction of knowing how scared she truly was. Her parents had been strong. Her grandparents before them had been Warriors. Abbie's entire lineage was filled with those who had defied the odds, had reached deep inside themselves, and found the will to stand up against a force that seemed far more powerful than they themselves were.

Once again, she met the Uya's gaze, but she looked up and instantly wished she hadn't. The Evil Earth Spirt had no hair; instead, her skull was covered with a writhing mass of inky black and oily green tentacles with gaping maws, thin and gray bifurcated tongues, and ragged incisors dripping with a venom that popped and sizzled when it hit the floor.

“Holy crap! Is she Medusa’s sister? Please tell me she’s not Medusa’s sister. I won’t look good turned to stone. I think I’d rather be invisible.”

“No, Isi,” Faye reassured. “The Uya is not kin to the Gorgon Queen.”

As she first imagined, the Uya had no nose, nor did she have lips, just a mouth full of sharp, jagged canines that were brownish-yellow and filled with gore and carnage. Her chin was elongated and pointed and reminded Abbie of the blade of the ceremonial dagger that hung over the fireplace in Cheveyo's office.

Committing every detail of her enemy to memory, the stories, the legends, and the information her Elders had shared with her over the years returned. She heard her mom's mom–Grandma Cassie's voice loud and clear, “The Uya resulted from the Hatred, the Darkness, the Despair created when the chaos of war and famine were allowed to run wild. She sprung from the wasteland left behind when pure Evil was allowed to run amuck–even for a short period of time. She is ancient, almost as old as the Earth, and she wants it all to die.”

Then her Grandpa Johnny spoke, picking up where her grandma had stopped. "At first, the Great Creator and the Powers That Be believed the Uya was necessary. They saw her as a way to help people. They wanted people to understand the duality and potential danger of negative forces in the world. You see, Isi, without Darkness, there can be no Light. Without Evil, there can be no Good. We–the normal folk–have to have both. We have to know both to recognize the difference."

"The trick is the balance," Momma Maybelle began. "Even you, a child born of the Light, must know Darkness. You must see the Evil but not be a part of it because you, Abigail Annabella Addams, like all of your Family, are Good. There are few better. You, Isi, are the Hope."

Letting out the breath she hadn't realized she was holding, Abbie fanned her fingers as they held onto the handle of the War Club to get the blood flowing and stood her ground. In the cavernous nothingness of the Uya's eyes, she recognized the machinations of true Malice. The Evil Earth Spirit was formulating her plan of attack. There it was, plain as day, as her eyes shifted from Abbie to the right.

The Uya knew Sydney was there and recognized the prize both women were.

Without another thought, Abbie slid in front of her friend and her cousin, yelling, “You came here for me, Bitch. So, let’s do this!”

Roaring, the sound so piercing and unearthly that Abbie could literally feel her eardrums vibrating, the Uya spoke its first words, “I will have you, Abigail Annabella Addams.”

Tuning out as she continued to pull fortitude from the center of the Earth, from Mother Nature Herself, Abbie tuned back in just as the Uya boasted, “But first, I will have all you hold dear–your friend, your family, and your Uktena. Today is the day of your death. Today is the death of the Everlasting Hope!”

Opening her mouth to once again challenge the Evil Earth Spirt, a deep, rumbling voice burst into her mind, “ Hold on , Mo stór! From this day forward, we fight side by side!”