by Kevin Hearne
“And what about Darren Yazzie?” she asked.
“Look, Miss Druid,” he said as he pulled a red plastic gasoline container and a thick manila envelope out of the back. Most of the good humor had bled out of his tone and now he sounded tired. “I didn’t know they was gonna get kilt. But I sacrificed myself twice and saved Mr. Druid’s life while I was at it. So I’ll be waitin’ for a thank-you note or maybe a nice batch of cookies from you. I think I’ve earned a coupla cookies.” He stalked away from the truck and headed for the nearest skinwalker corpse. The anonymous second man kept pace with him.
“I don’t make anyone cookies!” Granuaile growled at his back.
“Ain’t it time you learned?” Coyote said over his shoulder. “You ’n Betty Crocker can bake someone happy.”
Granuaile balled her fists and started after him, and I put a hand on her shoulder.
“Hold on, Granuaile, he’s just pushing your buttons.”
She shrugged off my hand and whirled to face me, pointing at Coyote’s back. “I’m going to kick him where it counts and give him a sad sack. I’m tired of his chauvinist bullshit and his cavalier attitude about people dying for him while he runs off and hides somewhere.”
“Well, you’re welcome to try that a bit later when he’s not expecting it,” I said in low tones. “Right now I want to see what he’s up to and meet this other guy, so hang back a bit and follow my lead, okay?”
She gathered herself with some effort and exhaled, letting the anger go for now. “Okay, sensei.”
We followed Coyote and his friend up to the nearest skinwalker body, the one Frank had killed with Moralltach. We stayed outside the ring of caltrops. Coyote hardly spared the body a glance. He directed his gaze above it, where the ch’įįdii was. I flipped my faerie specs on to take another look. If anything, it looked worse than before. The seething blacker portion of the spirit was overwhelming the darkness of the ch’įįdii.
“Ah, yes, this is one of the old ones,” Coyote said. “He’s tryin’ to break loose. Give ’im all night and he’ll probably manage it. The ch’įįdii will start to disperse, and then he’ll be free to go find some other black soul to turn into a skinwalker. Can’t let that happen.”
“Nope,” said the mysterious man.
The last time I’d looked at Coyote in the magical spectrum was back at a high school courtyard in Mesa. We’d been fighting a fallen angel together, and at the time I’d found him somewhat mesmerizing to look at; he was a kaleidoscope of shifting colors, an infinite potential of shapes confined to this human form only so long as he willed it. He still looked that way, but what surprised me was that the nameless man beside him looked precisely the same.
“Hey, Coyote, who’s your friend?”
“That’s Coyote. Coyote, meet Mr. Druid.”
“Howdy, Mr. Druid,” the man said. His voice was deep, like Michael Clarke Duncan’s, a low resonant bass that you felt as much as heard.
“Hi,” I said, then frowned at Coyote. “What do you mean?” I asked. “Is he from another tribe?”
“Nope, he’s from the Diné,” Coyote replied, obviously enjoying my confusion. “You don’t know our stories as well as you should. Most tribes have only the one Coyote, but in some versions of the Diné Bahane’—the tale of Emergence—there are two.”
“I’m Great Coyote,” the deep voice said. “Or sometimes Coyote Who Was Formed in the Water.”
“And I’m the one the Diné call Áłtsé Hashké,” Coyote said, then tossed his head at his companion. “He definitely has the better reputation. I get blamed for everything.”
“Two Coyotes?” I said. “What should I call you? Black Hat and White Hat? I can’t call you both the same thing.”
Coyote in the white hat said, “I tell people sometimes that my name is Joe,” he said. “Does that work for you?”
“Very well,” I said, and turned to Coyote in the black hat, who’d apparently been playing me for a sucker much longer than I thought. “And what about you?”
“You ain’t gonna call me by my real name, so just keep callin’ me Coyote and that way you won’t get confused.”
It was no wonder, I thought, that Frank hadn’t been sure which one of the First People Mr. Benally was. His comment that they were “capable of trickin’ a fella pretty good” made much more sense now. To my magical sight, Coyote and Joe looked exactly the same. There was no way to tell them apart. Only in the visible spectrum did they appear any different, and I’m sure that was by choice.
“Gotta thank you, Mr. Druid,” Coyote said. “Haven’t been able to get a shot at these boys in a long time.”
Joe nodded. “That’s right. This time we should be able to take care of them.”
“Take care of them how?” I gestured at the red gasoline containers. “You going to burn the bodies?”
“Well, for a start. If we stopped there, then the First World spirits could take off,” Coyote explained.
I was lost for a moment, but then I nodded. “Oh, I see. Because they’re bound to the ch’įįdiis and the ch’įįdiis are bound to the bodies.”
“Right. So if we just burn ’em and disperse the ghosts, then they’ll hightail it to Window Rock or someplace, turning regular assholes into superfast shape-shifting cannibal assholes.”
“Don’t you have a ritual to combat these guys?”
Coyote lifted his hat and scratched his head. “Well, Mr. Druid, it’s all defense and no offense. It’s protection like the Blessing Way, and there’s some exorcism in the Enemy Way—but there’s nothin’ to kill ’em with. All the killing rituals are on their side—’cause they’re practicin’ Áńł’įįh, the Witchery Way. Sometimes we get lucky and can turn their own spells against ’em. But these guys got smart and stopped doin’ ceremonies like that a long time ago, stopped spreadin’ their corpse powder around. Ain’t a doubt in my mind these spirits were behind that. They used their speed and strength to kill people and left me an’ the hataałiis nothin’ to work with.”
“So how do you kill them?”
“You can’t kill ’em,” Joe said, his voice cut with a note of impatience. “They’re damn spirits. All you can do is send ’em somewhere else—somewhere safe.”
“An’ that means sendin’ ’em back to First World,” Coyote said. “These things have been playin’ around up here for far too long. Once we get ’em back there, they’ll be stuck.”
“Why would they be stuck?” Granuaile asked. “Is there flypaper for spirits down there or something?”
Joe laughed and squatted down on his haunches to untie his jish. “That’d be nice, ’cause then they wouldn’t bother us when we visit. But Coyote means they won’t be able to leave First World again. The doorway to Second World was closed long ago, an’ now only he an’ I can go back there an’ return again.” He peered up at Coyote. “We’re gonna need to get these caltrops outta the way, though, before we can start.”
Granuaile said, “There’s a couple of brooms in the hogan. I’ll go grab them.” As her footsteps crunched behind me, I felt foolish standing there with a naked sword, so I gingerly crept back into the circle, keeping my distance from the skinwalker’s body, and recovered the scabbard. I sheathed Moralltach and slung it over my back. Coyote tossed his manila envelope onto the ground behind him; whatever was in there wasn’t important to him right now.
Inside Joe’s jish were some feathers, rattles, pouches of herbs, and two sacred buckskins. He divided the contents with Coyote.
When Granuaile returned with two brooms, we carefully brushed all the caltrops to the south side against the wall. She saw Frank there and quietly said, “He was such a sweet man. How did he die?”
“Heart attack. They didn’t get him, though. Other way around.”
She didn’t reply, only nodded, and then leaned her broom up against the wall of the butte. The two Coyotes were murmuring to each other in their own language. When they finished, Joe set off toward the other skinwalker, who had fallen to hi
s death some thirty yards away to the west. Coyote stepped closer to the blackened one that Frank had killed and motioned us over.
“Wanna tell ya somethin’ in case somethin’—well, just in case, all right? See, in the beginnin’, me an’ Joe weren’t much differ’nt than that thing you see there.” He pointed at the boiling blackness of the First World spirit. “Except we were a whole lot sexier, o’ course. First Man and First Woman, they were spirits of the air too. We were people of mist, if you wanna think about it that way. An’ as we rose up through the worlds, we changed, an’ these bodies were given to us by the Holy People.” He tossed his head toward the spirits before continuing, “These fuckers, however, came up with us from First World, but they never got their bodies. They’re unevolved, see? Unless you wanna count the fact that they’ve turned from plain ornery to pigshit evil. Thing is, like Joe said, we can’t do anything to ’em when they’re spirits. So we’re gonna give ’em bodies. Their own bodies, not somebody else’s body they can possess and turn to the Witchery Way. Then we step on ’em.”
“Beg your pardon?” Granuaile said.
“They’re insects,” Coyote said. “Not sure what kind. Could be ants, could be those hard-shelled bigass beetles, could be dragonflies or locusts, but insects no matter what. When we get through with this ceremony, they’ll be bugs, and we can kill ’em easy and send ’em back to First World. They won’t be coming back, though. So you two can help by kinda standin’ over there.” He pointed to a space between the two skinwalker corpses. “Once they’re bugs, they’re gonna try to get away—they’ll skitter around or fly or somethin’—and we could use your help to chase ’em down.”
“What if they do get away?” Granuaile asked.
Coyote shrugged. “Ain’t that big a deal. What’s the average life span of a bug? They’ll die eventually. A bird will eat ’em if we’re lucky. They’ll be on the slow train to First World instead of the express, that’s all. The important thing is they’ll be mortal and won’t be able to harm anyone after this. We’re gonna get started now before the ch’įįdii start to disperse, all right?”
He bent down and grabbed a pouch of corn pollen and an eagle feather.
“Um—” I said, but Coyote started to sing before I could form a coherent question, and I knew he wouldn’t stop for my benefit now that he’d begun. Joe’s voice joined in from over by the other skinwalker, and that left Granuaile and me with nothing to do but worry.
My apprentice asked the philosophical question first. “Is he trying to create something out of nothing, sensei? Can he do that?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “Maybe.”
“But how?”
“I don’t know. Let’s go stand over there where he asked us to.”
Granuaile kept talking as we moved. “Don’t you know how the stories went? How did First Man and First Woman get their bodies? You can’t tell me you don’t remember.”
“Well, I’m fairly certain the process didn’t involve gasoline,” I said, watching the two Coyotes sprinkle gas on the skinwalkers’ bodies as they sang and danced around them clockwise.
She snorted. “That’s a safe bet.”
“I understand why they’re doing it: They have to unbind the spirit from the ch’įįdii before they can shove it into a body. It just seems to be a very modern way to do it. You’d think they’d use some pine or juniper or something.”
Granuaile frowned. “Yeah, that is weird. He seemed like he was in a hurry, though.”
“True. And it’s not an important part of giving the spirit a body. The buckskin has a lot to do with that.” Both Coyotes had set the bodies on fire now and the spirits were billowing, straining to get away. They definitely did not like the light. Nor did they want to be bound to those ch’įįdiis anymore.
“What do they do with the buckskin?”
“In the Diné Bahane’, there are a few different stories where the Holy People gave spirits a corporeal form. Usually they covered up corn or special stones with sacred buckskins and then invited the Wind to blow underneath the skin. Nilch’i was the name of the Wind, and it always had to blow four times—four was an important number. But the idea was that you had a Breath of Life thing going on there, like you see in many creation stories.”
“Oh, cool.” Granuaile flashed a quick smile at me. “I like how certain ideas seem to be almost universal.”
“I dig that too. It’s cool how almost every culture has some sort of trickster figure like Coyote, who’s always cocking something up—oh, shit.” I paled.
“What?”
“This could be very bad.” The Coyotes had unfurled their sacred buckskins over the burning bodies and briefly let them rest on top, smothering the flames before lifting the buckskins and letting the Wind blow underneath them for the first time. The resulting plume of smoke and ash was made worse by the enraged ch’įįdiis and spirits.
“Coyote is one of the First People, not one of the Holy People,” I pointed out. He didn’t have the same powers of creation. Granuaile understood right away.
“Oh, shit,” she breathed, as the Coyotes dropped the buckskins a second time and lifted them again, inviting the Wind to blow. In my magical sight, I saw the ch’įįdiis weakening and the spirits straining mightily to break free.
“Yeah. And there’s a whole series of tales where Coyote tries to imitate Badger and Wolf and so on, and every time he does, he fails spectacularly.”
“Fails as in nothing happens, or fails as in something explodes?”
The Coyotes dropped their buckskins a third time, and when they rose again to invite the Wind to blow, the ch’įįdiis were almost gone. The spirits would be free the next time they raised those skins. Or they’d be trapped inside the form of a bug.
“Depends on the story. A bit of both.” Without realizing it, I had drawn Moralltach and set myself in a defensive stance.
“Gah! Can’t we do something?”
“Hope nothing happens,” I said, watching the buckskins fall for the fourth time. But when the Coyotes lifted them from the fire, something happened: Instead of smoke and ch’įįdiis and spirits, giant locusts the size of half-ton pickups erupted from underneath them, and the source of that torn-metal skinwalker scream became woefully clear. It was also clear we would not be stepping on these bugs.
“Run for the hogan!” I shouted over the noise, giving her a tiny shove in that direction. She would have to run around, because Coyote’s locust was between us. I began a charge at it but then halted as it fluttered enormous wings—the sound and wind was like a helicopter taking off—and leapt out of the fire. It pivoted and seized Coyote with its front legs and bit off his head, hat and all. A fevered glance backward showed that Joe was also abruptly on the menu. Occupied as they were with their Coyote Crunch ’n’ Munch, the horrors didn’t forget about us. They shifted their giant back legs a bit and fixed their nasty compound eyes on our progress. Granuaile and I were next.
Chapter 31
I admit that I froze, and it wasn’t just because I was scared. I was woefully unprepared.
Locusts of Unusual Size weren’t supposed to exist. I had seen a large insect fairly recently, but it was a type of assassin beetle called a wheel bug, and it wasn’t really a bug at all but rather a demon using that shape to scare the bejesus out of people. Demons don’t belong on this plane, and Gaia has no trouble giving me an assist in dealing with them. I could use Cold Fire on them or summon the local elemental to throw down for me—which is what Sonora had done in that case. But these weren’t demons; as far as Gaia was concerned, they were natural creatures—just big’uns—so that meant magic was off limits, and Colorado wouldn’t lift a pebble to help me fight them directly. I turned off my faerie specs since they wouldn’t help me anymore, but left night vision on.
Normally bugs don’t grow more than six inches in length, due to the limitations of their tracheal systems, and all that heavy chitin they have to lug around has got to be a drag. Coyote had screwed that all
up. He gave these bugs plenty of Wind—way too much, in point of fact—and those old First World spirits took full advantage of the chance to be on top of the food chain. The spirits of these locusts hadn’t been raised on a diet of grains but rather on human flesh whenever they could get it. If they lived to reproduce, cities would have to invest in antiaircraft batteries to protect their citizens from swarms. Locusts would descend on small towns and eat people like corn on the cob. Did FEMA have a contingency plan in place for something like that?
I found myself missing Mr. Semerdjian and his garage full of rocket-propelled grenade launchers. And again I missed Fragarach—I doubted Moralltach would make a dent in the locusts’ armor. It was green and sleek and looked like it was made of that impenetrable counter-top material. But … maybe I could pull a Rancor? You don’t find hard, chitinous exoskeleton on the inside of a bug. I almost immediately discarded that thought, because those multiple mandibles—blades and feelers and way more moving parts than a mouth should have—were alarmingly efficient at chewing up Coyote. But after checking to make sure Granuaile was still running for the hogan, I charged anyway, yelling as I went to snare its attention.
When one doesn’t have Fragarach handy, the answer to strong armor is stronger blunt force; a baseball bat will do more damage than a sword blade. Confined to a large, bulky body, the spirit didn’t have unnatural speed anymore—it had the speed of a grasshopper, to be sure, but that wasn’t impossible for me to match. Boosting my speed and strength and transferring Moralltach to my left hand, I bent down and scooped up a stone the size of a softball, like a shortstop on a 6–3 play. First base in this case was the locust’s left eye. I whipped it at him, but he saw it coming and flinched away. Rather than hitting his eye, the stone caught him on the side of the mouth, knocking the lower half of Coyote’s body loose with a slurping noise, which was quickly followed by a keening screech. One of those little twitching maxilla thingies was hanging loose and slack now, and the creature leapt away, fluttering its wings with a low rumble of thunder.