Chapter 25
Sam fought rising panic.Had she come all this way only to find her aunt totally mad and howling at the moon? She glanced nervously over her shoulder, but didn’t see any moon, full or otherwise. The fog was driftinginland.
“Valdis?” shecalled.
“Go back,”Valdis wailed. “The serpents nest underme.”
Serpents.Deep breath, Samantha, there be no dragons here.“Can you come down here where Iam?”
She tried to see her aunt, but the flashlight revealed only large boulders tumbled from a long agomudslide.
“Twisted the damned ankle,” her aunt said in a perfectly prosaicvoice.
Sam was so relieved by the normality that shealmost shook with laughter, until she realized Valdis had been up here for twenty-four hours without food and drink. Or drugs. “I have water and a first-aid kit in my backpack. How do I avoid theserpents?”
“They’re in the rocks, hunting. You can’t. Don’t waste your life for mine. You are the only hope of eradicating the evil. It’s spreading. Even Lance is infected now. This is all Susannah’sfault. You were supposed to learn art, not science.” This time, despair and a hint of doom crept back in hervoice.
Art! She couldn’t draw a straight line. Shecouldgo back and get help. But she hated abandoning her aunt—and leaving her in danger ofsnakes.
Sam shuddered, realizing Valdis probably meant she was sitting above a snakenest.
Faced with family or phobia, Samgirded her figurative loins, held her breath, and cautiously poked her staff among the rocks. If she believed in magic, she’d hope the stick would guard her safely past snakes and up the boulderpath.
A bite would cause excruciating damage before they could reach anti-venom supplies. Snake-bite kits were mostly for pretending something was being done so the victim stayedcalm.
“Whycan’t Cass hear you?” she asked, hoping to distract herself if not Valdis as sheclimbed.
“Unconscious,” Valdis said in disgust. “Not good withpain.”
“Well, start sending magic signals to Cass now. I’m comingup.”
Swallowing hard, fighting panic, Sam stepped up on the first rock in the slide area, beating her staff against the stone and underbrush. She almost wished her memoryhadn’treturned.
Valdis started to moan, not in pain, but as if possessed. Now, it wasn’t only the hair on the back of Sam’s neck standing up. She had goosebumps up and down herarms.
“He’s here,”Valdis wailed. “He’s here. He’s come back! Be careful. I don’t know him anymore. The evil... He doesn’t know what he’s doing. Promise me, you’ll take care of them. Don’t let them givein totemptation...”
Sam beat her stick against the next rock, whacked at the bushes, and prayed to whatever gods or spirits looked after mad women. “Who’s back?” she called, just because. She was fairly certain this was her aunt on spirits, notdrugs.
“Go away!” Valdis shouted in a voice not her own, confirming Sam’s suspicion. “Go back! Leave this place. Let the evil die hereas Idid!”
“Okay, that’s not a positive attitude,” Sam muttered. “Valdis, block that jerk. You’re not dying. Find someoneuseful.”
Maybe she had started channeling Cass and her acerbic take on life. No wonder her great-aunt was a little weird if she’d lived with people in her head all her life. That sounded like a description of schizophrenia if she’d ever heardone.
Valdisfell silent. Biting her bottom lip, Sam climbed a little faster, questioning her sanity as shewent.
In the silence, she heard the unmistakable rattle of a diamondback. Samfroze.
Valdis chose that moment to start howling. “It’s in the paint! I see the demons, and they see me! Stop them, stop them now, bury the demons before they reachus!”
Snakes, paint, demons...Snakes—snakes were real. The rattle was loud and threatening. She was in its territory. Stay calm, don’t panic. What did the books say she was supposed to do?Freeze.Respect the snake.Okay, she was completely frozen. If respect meant frozen with fear, yup, she was all overit.
“Don’t worry, he’s gone.” Valdis spoke in a sing-song voice with a slight accent—Scandinavian? “You’ll do fine if youdon’t give in to greed as the others did. Don’t play with the crystals and be strong, dears. It’s up to you to rebuild our beautifulfarm.”
Don’t play withcrystals?
The new voice almost sounded coherent. Either that, or Sam figured she was as nuts as her aunt. She’d feel better if the voice had said don’t play withsnakes.
